To Work

To employers I whore myself with shame,
Using all my or'fices to proclaim:
“I’ll fulfill your caprices for a fee

In total submission of liberty.”

Like the men in brothels assessing traits,

They pick in fairs the proper candidates:

Indentured servants with advanced degrees

of eager appeasement and slavery.

In forty years I’ll find the forgone dream
Of easy country life and simple means:

A frugal painter under stars that glow

And fisherman in coastal Mexico,

But now to work I go.