Downsized

There was a moment when Arthur Andersen was bleeding out after Enron

I was in the process of being laid off, jettisoned as flotsam for an income statement

Despite the CNN broadcasts I did not hear it coming on that day

As if I was safe or that my work product was relevant to the employment evisceration

There was a phone call received by my coworker

Approximately four thirty on a Monday afternoon in 2002

Leave the publicly traded company you are working on their 10Q

After having finished the previous year’s 10k the Friday before

Return to home office

Managing partner is waiting

Enter

We have to let you go

I thought of my father.

His exchange with a company that would later become Entergy

His flights to Pine Bluff Arkansas for labor away from us like a migratory bird

Dropping food in mouths

His termination, release into that wilderness

The self judgement on his manhood

How he rebounded, how he did not

Yesterday I got summoned into an office at four thirty on a Friday

The email to arrive said four people were supposed to attend

The president informed me upon arrival the other two would not be coming

Subterfuge, the non-alert of the employee to drain the most out before truncation

The avoidance of startling a bull in a computer system

Deletion, destruction of data, the milk-blood of money

A decision was made two months ago abruptly to shift accounting systems

Without request of my input, this was happening, my superior said he had no say

It costs twenty thousand dollars and about three thousand a year

Replacing one that cost $600; I did not understand.  Now I do.

They did not pay anyone to train me.  Why waste medicine on a terminal animal?

I figured out the software like a maze I was born to run on some empirical addiction

To learn, to grow, taking on the challenge of the moment, what was asked

Slipping, forgetting the lessons of the machine

That I am in this a number on the financial statements I prepare

For bodies that own assets; we are trading time for digits in banks

The thought a man and his siblings chairing a trust would restructure me without a goodbye

The insulated priority to be treated as a remainder in a quotient

Lopped off the body in deliberate impersonal cessation

Prompting me to begin life once more typing on resumes

Cover letters and explanations referencing the fallout of men like Kenneth Lay

I do not want my talents to make money for men like that

The initial shock, tears dripped the reservoir

Realizing the man who hired me is no longer in charge

The owners have ousted the ranks of logic, detailed discussion

The republic has flooded. Porsches in designated parking spots

Puffed chests and breasted trophy wives for a man

Who knows his father could have been a billionaire

And ended up with some sum of millions   

Understanding the mathematics, shifting ones and zeroes

I woke up depressed Friday morning later in the day

I got downsized in a jolt of numb ache contemplation

I woke up Saturday excited positive about what life can be

Enron taught me bitter does not do a damn thing for better

Like Twain said anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel

In which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured

I am divine love.  I wish you peace.  

Take these passwords.  Take my house of bricks.  Patch your straw.

Slice whatever you think of me away. 

I will be egoless

Slip through the shadow of a man I no longer will be. 

Forests sprout from rain, but nourish growth from shit and fire. 

Raze my trees, level to dust, and I will be timber licking the sky

Fuel in letting go of comfort.  Suffering cannot exist without want.

Knowing a path is gone, volition nil, I choose what is open.