Working at Saatchi, I would fly down to Florida on a regular basis to meet with clients in Boca Raton. I wanted to memorialize that life somehow, leave a record of what we carried in those briefcases, me and all the other poets on the plane.
–
Business Class
The flight attendants maneuver their way
down the darkened aisle, bending and smiling,
checking our condition. After three good
bourbons, I glance around. I’m surrounded
by people in business suits who look
like me, the older ones reading,
the younger ones pointing out bonus
rewards in their sales catalogues.
“Have a nice day,” the recorded message
at the airport urges, in all sincerity.
We’ve tried, in all sincerity.
We’ve tried to make money, for ourselves
and our homes and expensive families.
We’re doing the best we can, living
out of briefcases filled with Maalox
and PERT charts, rental car tickets,
stock quotes, cigarettes and gum.
On the seat beside me, a senior man
is already asleep, a finance review
resting on his stomach, his mouth half open.
Each year I tell myself that I’m leaving
in the next few years. A writer can’t
live like this, can’t think, and yet
if I had the perfect leisure to think,
with endless mornings and a massive desk
overlooking the ocean, perhaps I would think
of nothing at all, or a little
less each year. No. I have my heavy
bills to pay, like every other poet
on this plane. So tell me this isn’t
a life or a living. Tell me that it all
doesn’t count.
