Up From The Floor

They sit in silence. In camera, around the table. Terrifyingly stern, stares that grew antlers in my eyes.         It was as if thunder or bolts with electricity were being decreed.         The self-important, the pompous, well-fed and self-assured.         Here to hazard a fling of the dice - to decide whether another should eat.         Employment. The interview. One with yellow tusks protruding to his coffee cup. Eyes, some primordial forest cut for a firebreak back of his soul. And I think of the desperate, those lacking bus-fare to get to such a carnival. Valuable postage money, photocopying, scrimped dollars for a suit to entertain the pumpkins dicing for a worthless garment. A scavenger run, piles of white applications heaped as bones in a graveyard made careless after a violent storm.         Or elephants in tow, trunks wrapped around the other waiting for the ringmaster to signal the question important; whether a neophyte new at sharpening his teeth at a daily wage should be allowed presence onto such a hallowed ground.         And I think such things are the very matter of evil - that these are vile intemperates with their accursed shortlists deigning to be gracious, shaking hands after the fact. Mafioso manners, the sickly grins back of the shovels used to bury another.