Office Friendships
Eve is madly in love with Hugh
And Hugh is keen on Jim.
Charles is in love with very few
And few are in love with him.
Myra sits typing notes of love
With romantic pianist's fingers.
Dick turns his eyes to the heavens above
Where Fran's divine perfume lingers.
Nicky is rolling eyes and tits
And flaunting her wiggly walk
Everybody is thrilled to bits
By Clive's suggestive talk.
Sex suppressed will go berserk,
But it keeps us all alive.
It's a wonderful change from wives and work.
And it ends at half past five.
Commentary
As part of his theme “Poems at Work”
I love Ewart, he’s always fun and cool. And offices are sort of cruisy places, especially given the amount of time we spend in them these days, and the modern management emphasis on how we all have to be close and one big family. So we all spend this much time together, and it’s hardly surprising then that our thoughts turn towards incest… with the predictably disastrous consequences.
It’s also why, I think, that all offices I’ve been in are obsessed with food. Everyone is always eating, offering food around, going out for lunches, comparing lunchboxes. Since you can’t have the one kind of sensory gratification, you overdo the other.
— Vikram
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Larry Clipper · 27 March 2001
I love the poem and the comment. I work in an office one day a week and am highly amused at the equation of food for sex. People bring in cookies, cake, peanuts, three kinds of candies, etc. etc. And they sit around looking at each other, nibbling on the candies, sensuously unwrapping the toffees, pouring coffees, all the while looking at each other’s physical attributes.
It’s wonderful. And then, five minutes of five, the whole thing collapses.