Blast From the Past

Okay, so I've been wasting time looking at files I archived in 1996. To celebrate, I will now share with you a poem I wrote about my work environment in the dining hall at Brown. Enjoy.

Dishroom: a complaint


As we slump in the dishroom in the morning,
We can imagine the most frigid landscape to be idyllic.
There must be birds chirping out there,
There must be cars honking or people walking,
Breezes blowing or laughter or fun or even sleep --
Something better than the monotony of conveyor belts,
The steam rising from the diabolical dishmachine,
The defective beeping of the soap dispensers.
O you mess makers, you half-eaters of food,
You pourers of excessive syrup,
Takers of a thousand juice glasses --
Who scrapes the soggy pancakes from your saccharine plates?
Who pries apart your bowls stuck together with Cheez Whiz?
Who feeds your soup cups into the infinite, rumbling dishmachine
And retrieves them at the other end when they emerge, bone-white and
hotter than suns?
When you send your silverware through with your tray, who screams in
frustration at your trespass?
We, we few, we miserable few,
Denizens of the humming room, the stagnant, humid room,
We who watch the milk curdle as we mix it with orange juice,
We who sweat and scrape at 8:45 when all of you leave at once to make your
9:00 classes,
We struggle to keep the conveyor belt from stopping.
There is no fun, no laughter in the dishroom --
There are only the conveyor belts.
I would like to write on the conveyor belt
An endless message to travel around and around,
An enduring inspiration for future prisoners --
I would like to write this thing, this monument,
But the conveyor belt runs the wrong way.
My hands are covered with syrup
And they won't even give us a radio.