Pith & Vinegar: "Boredom"

Today's poem is from my 1995 chapbook, Workers' Comp. (That's my dad, on the right in the cover shot, standing below the GAINFULLY EMPLOYED? banner, holding his paycheck. This photo is most likely from when he worked as a polisher at Ternstedt, in Flint.)

Boredom

People are bored, you can tell.
You can see it in their eyes
and in their manner—
the way their feet step
by rote and they never look
up to see where they're going.

I'm bored, too, barely
breathing through days on the job,
walking downtown in shadows
of anonymous skyscrapers,
diligently enabled
until five o'clock.

The only worse thing than being
bored are those people who
aren't—not because every
day's an adventure but because
every day isn't—with their go-
getters' enthusiasm and purgatorial pluck.