“The shelves around his office are full of shiny awards, shrivelled words. “
Number twenty-seven and off-prompt. Something inspired by a news story from today and what must still be a commonplace practice in ‘Showbiz’ and too many other career paths, I daresay.
I used a random picture generator to find me something inspiring and found some empty shelves. And that’s where this came from…
Opportunity
The shelves around his office
are full of shiny awards,
shrivelled words. So much so,
they flex, bow. Not with the weight
of the hollow gold men, or the jagged
cut-glass shapes from this Academy
or that Authority. But with phrases
like, Well guess who I know…
or Sure, I’ll make the intro,
if…
These shelves, where he stored
up lines on the wall. Clawed
his way up brutal ladders. Line
after line. Practiced until polished.
Polished until perfect as his Brasso
teeth. Line after line. Polished until shin-
ing. Again. Again. Again.
Polished, until you can almost see
projecting back from each of them
some other seized opportunity’s
Rimmel- streaked eyes.