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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Patricia McGuigan

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Office

I have worked in your office for thirty years,
date-stamping invoices,
whiting out mistakes,
printing small neat columns of figures
in the ledgers.
I answer the telephone pleasantly.
I have gone grey
and I do my shopping in the lunch hour.
I do the collections for people leaving.
I laugh dutifully when you tell new recruits,
You don’t have to be mad to work here .... but it helps!

I’ll show you what mad is.
Each time you say, Morning campers,
I want to kill you with my bare hands.

Tomorrow I will strip naked, stand on my desk
with the waste paper basket over my head,
singing La Marseillaise at the top of my voice.
I will shred all the files
and write BOLLOCKS on the staff holiday planner.
I will photocopy my arse
and fax it to Head Office.
I will set fire to your desk.
They will take me away
with a policeman’s jacket around my shoulders.

I won’t be having a leaving do.

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