Arion Resigns

Mutiny is the last I remember.  being pitched over.  only to awaken here.   drowning in an Aeron chair.  typing my own ransom memo for the corporate pirates who pay me in somnambulistic days.  unsure how I was fished out and tanked.  I fill an ironic window on the twenty-second floor.  the Fisher Building scrapes dun sky above Detroit ghettos.  peregrine falcons give shape to gnarled winds.  snatch pigeons from the currents.  only to set gutted featherbones within reach.  upon my sill.  meanwhile, I eat years.  dolphins and humpback whales dive over and again down the blue mural decay of the Broderick building beyond.  eventually someone calls a meeting.  in it I ask who drifted my life away on hot sirens rising from the steaming streets.  this is what no one wants to talk about.  of course.  our talk is deliverables.  project status.  the milky muse of my brain sours.  pours over mouthfuls of suspect words.  synergy.  milestone.  benchmark. bleeding edge.  the omnipotent R.O.I.   a burning furrow worms my gut.  afraid of the sleep threatening to dream me fathoms deeper.  I sip my nth cup of black.   mull the word talk until the sound turns crow:  talk.  tawk.  cawk.  caw.  swim back to my desk against dead seas.  stalled by the very air I've forgotten how to need.  this is what's left.  facing the life I've wrought.  a comfortable near-miss namesake chair.  a window on the 22nd floor.  a hole in space just beyond the sill's rail leaking the dregs of a wine god's song.  painted, peeling dolphins wondering if I will leap.  or pick over these remnants.  a pigeon carcass.  the falcon found unworthy.