Ode To Retail

Ode to you, oh retail beast
Filled with your impatient customers, pregnant wives, middle aged men
Shifty young thugs jimmying security pucks off stacks of folded t-shirts,
While Vietnamese families stroll through chattering quickly,
Ode to you, line-ups at the till,
Moving restlessly from one foot then back to the other
As the young clerk sweats and makes eye contact only with the screen,
Customers tangle in line, vying for a closer spot to the door.
Ode to you, screaming children
Running up and down the aisles, in and out of racks
Splitting the workers headachey heads with your shrill cries,
Parents too busy shopping around to stop you.
Ode to you, workers on commission,
Cattily stealing each other's sales,
Blindly lying to customers, "Oh that looks great on you!"
Selling your souls for 8 dollars an hour.
Didn't your mother tell you not to lie?
Ode to you, retail lifers
The only life you will know is between the racks,
Flitting from one customer to the next,
Overly cheery, overly excited about the newest shipment of shoes,
The latest style to come out.
You're too old for this.
Ode to you, retail beast
Bulging, growing, distending retail beast
Your hunger is never satisfied
And I don't think.... will ever end.