Work-Ethical by John Elwyn Kimber

Toil for your soul tannoyed from the high
Moral ground of corporate expediency –
Bills, demands: letters-of-the-law,
Work makes you free above the door

To the high-security hearth-and-home,
Domestic hypertension’s bloody lebensraum,
Wired in by agreement to one thickening pulse:
The High Moral Tonelessness of work or else.

Children, bred only to be bought and sold
down the black river slicked with gleams of gold.
If only for this, all couples loved in vain:
Driven brow-down into the driving rain

Of imagery for fugitives high-tailing for
The gold-haloed beaches of Forevermore.
Free citizen the very last we hear;
The tail-lights storm onward-bound and disappear.

First published in the Californian magazine, Empirical.