Breaking The Back

on leaving school immersed in philanthropic notions (of a kind
these days i find unthinkable) i pulled my frail frame onto my
charger and rode off into a sunset with agenda predictable.
fresh faced - young dumb and tragically convinced that blind
faith could make an infantile normative playground theory on
social interaction positive enough to show them all but alas!
working the tills put hair on my chest, telesales made me a man.
and everything was going to be ok, but the making of the man was
the breaking of the back upon the rock of everyday hostility.
and i don't mean to seem at all ungrateful, but the
air-conditioned life has left me gasping for some real
conversation. and just because turing couldn't possibly conceive
a machine with this little personality, i'm working shifts in
veal-fattening pens, and yet i'm puppy thin because to tell the
truth i was hanging on for something more than distant dial
tones and a sense of ending. the breaking of the back was the
making of the man.