A mid-career shift from mopping to mail room brought Bean Newton in touch with the corporate world in a very different way than he had had before, and the observations in "Allegro non Trippo" represent this newfound "perspicacity," or, at least, perspective.
As he described his new work to a friend, "I think I can actually hear the music of corporate bureaucracy. It crowds out all the oldies." -- E.W. Wilder
Allegro non Trippo
And as it turned out the allegro
con brio tuna dinner was not
appreciated, and We turned Our tabby-
tummy and went elsewhere, as
normal temps turned purple and
the Machine was switched
to "agitate," revisiting upon
us our reflection of us, rare-
faction of—and distillation of—
the distemper and/or all 'round
anomie of a million memos, and
—was it? The clear lines of communication
or cocaine beaming power from a back room.
Consider—no
IGNORE the brevity with which
eyes attention you; sized up you'll never move
past the cubicle-zone where every noize of throat-
clearing glory gets amplified to the status of epic.
It was no—but YES—coincidence that in those
days both rats and people. But you've heard this one.
Turned down,
the duvet, the delay, the board
reading, for everyone else, "On time."
It turns out the "brio" was cheese, was
supposed to be cheese, a tepid orange sauce
that now we're all in, swimming in it now,
drowning like it, like it might be a
"thing."