I work late
Nights stocking shelves
Making sure everything is
Straight.

It is not much of a living, but I
live.

There is a boy
Hardly over sixteen
Bent and tired
Who comes in at four in the morning
To breakdown
Boxes with a knife.
We call him the Ripper.

The Ripper and I,
work where people shop,
where tired skeletons
Smile at each other.
Where families
Bloom on pennies
Pinched from the dark.
Where meaning is scraped from the
Dirt of products
With unkempt nails.
Where father time
Takes a fifteen to watch
The light leak out of life.

The Ripper and I,
work in sea level crypts
floating
Beyond the fog of night.
Without light,
Without hope,
Without knowing
			why

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