The Meeting

The senior stakeholder is doodling.  The senior user
refuses to sign off on the product, so the stage is stuck
in a quality loop.  The senior supplier is absent
(hypothermia) and has sent his representative
whose strength is operations, not strategy
or talking.  The project manager’s risk report
is given only cursory consideration, for which
he resents the project executive, who has his reasons.

The delivery team is at war in language
just beyond its reasoning.  A perfect idea of work
is at war with work, with people using each other
as weapons.  Too many emails and sandwiches,
corridors receding to retirement or redundancy,
doors behind walls behind doors.  Outside, at the window,
a gigantic woman rubs shit into her breasts, laughing.
No one looks, everyone has homes, no one is here.