ABSURD EMPLOYMENT CRISIS


These poems don’t talk about work—they live inside the fallout. It’s not about “office life” or “capitalist critique” in the usual ways. It’s subtler than that. Stranger. This is the part of the gallery where language comes back from a long shift—bent out of shape, a bit haunted, still wearing its badge.


John O’Hare’s poems operate on a kind of bureaucratic absurdism. They’re funny, yes—but in the way burnout is funny when you’re too tired to cry. His speaker feels stuck inside the script of modern productivity: CVs, forms, stock phrases, and the awful repetition of being asked to sell yourself when you’re already sold out. These aren’t career poems. They’re existential HR reports, written by someone who knows the printer’s broken and doesn’t bother to fix it.


Dave Whitehead’s pieces are quieter, but just as corrosive. There’s a softness to the imagery—stairs, steam, sunlight—but it’s never comfort. These poems chart emotional erosion. The slow dissolution of self that comes not from one tragedy, but from too many mild disappointments in a row. It’s the internal weather of someone who never clocked out, and can’t remember how to ask for help.


They belong together because they show us two angles of the same architecture: O’Hare builds the office, Whitehead shows the room you disappear into. And between them? A faint smell of instant coffee, and the sense that even the photocopier is tired of you.


Featuring:

— John O’Hare

— Dave Whitehead

John O’Hare


Intro to Poems

(for John O’Hare)


These poems don’t want a promotion. They want out. They’re not interested in climbing the ladder—they’re trying to saw the legs off the desk. John O’Hare writes from inside a system that pretends it’s working. His speaker knows the words, wears the suit, but can’t shake the sense that this whole operation—productivity, ambition, self-branding—is quietly eating him alive. There’s comedy here, but it’s the kind that arrives with a nosebleed. Think Beckett with a bad haircut. His metaphors are cubicles. His punchlines are resignation letters.


O’Hare isn’t mocking the modern workplace. He’s translating its absurdity into something human, which might be worse. His poems speak in the clipped tones of someone who’s been asked to “circle back” one too many times—and finally snapped.


carpe diem


life is a virus,

and you might be contagious,

check yourself regularly,


your dreams are vast,

they burn small holes in the mattress,

beware of small fires,


don’t become an extra in the film of your life,

shred the script of mindless tyranny,

turn off the TV,


there are many things to know,

like, if a mirror doesn’t reflect, is it a window?

put your fist through and see,


other people are just sheep waiting to be sheared,

whereas you are a goat out in a field on its own, going mad,

and life is a memory that is out of control.


—


zero hours


it’s routine,

squared,

learn by rote,

ready prepared,


no commitment,

no burden,

it’s a jungle out there,

nothing is certain,


team players,

that are fiercely independent,

risk takers,

with a cautious approach,

people who can shake things up,

without rocking the boat,


keep it simple,

keep it neat,

keep it like canned meat,

canned beans, canned brains,

canned dreams,

rack them, stack them,

vac-pack them,


add water if you must,

just cook!

but above all

keep your chin up,


stop doubting and fearing,

querying and sneering,

stop groaning and moaning,

moping and groping,

stop blindly hoping,


you need this,

like you need to step on an upturned plug,

like a bee’s nest tossed to you when you’re sat on the toilet,

and you’ve let your legs go numb,


better together,

snug like the t’s in hot butter,

let’s grow old together,

until we start to look the same.


—


staying hungry


I’m flapping through the streets in my big, borrowed suit.

Creases so sharp they could slice fruit.

What I’m trying to say, is I’ll be your five-a-day.

I’m used to working long hours for low pay.

I’m the part in church that goes, ‘get on your knees, let’s pray.’


I’ve been cruising through job sites like a lonely missile.

I’ve been turning out my pockets in the reduced aisle.

Check out my LinkedIn profile.

I took a selfie in front of a random yacht.

I’m trying to say, I’m hot. I’m on fire. I’m sweating like a zoo.

I’ve got a fever and there’s nothing I can do.

Achoo!


I’ve got the Old Spice lathered on like petrol on a BBQ.

I’ve been prepping hard for this interview.

I’ve been up all night.

I’ve bleached my teeth ice white.

On the first day the Lord said let there be light.

And now here I am, fighting the good fight.

I want to be your saviour tonight.

I’ll be your sunshine. I’ll be your rain.

I’ll be the vampire you invite inside again…

Wow, even the slightest breeze causes my teeth inconceivable pain.


I’m addicted to motivational speeches:

Hey, you, my mentor beseeches. Stop walking around so fuzzy.

Straighten yourself!

I’ll play it so straight that rulers will call me square.

I can perform the most basic tasks with flair.

I’ve been surviving on thin air.


My mother said that you live your life for days like these.

She also said, complacency is a disease.

Hold my nose I think I might sneeze.


I can’t sit still, I can’t settle.

We are born ready to grasp the nettle.

Show me the teabags, I’ll fill up the kettle.

If you don’t keep active, you get sloppy.

Get your bum on the machine, click photocopy.

Think fast. Act fast. I’ll be the mail that’s delivered first class.


I spot my reflection in the tinted glass.

I’m going for gold.

I’ve got genes so good they should be canned and sold.

I’m Peter Pan, I’ll never get old.

I’m more than resilient.

I apply myself.

I’ve got pragmatism.

In fact, I think I metabolise optimism.

I beat the iron filings to the front of the queue when they were giving out magnetism.

To try harder than me would simply be masochism.


The receptionist hands me a clipboard and a checkbox form,

and I take it and I check it, and tick it,

like I’ve been ticking boxes my whole life.


I sling it back at her and stroke my quiff which is massive.

Then I head straight into the interview room like a twitchy cowboy in a bandit saloon.

Yabba dabba do, I say,

and I smack my rump so hard that all the windows burst open.


Relax, they say.

I tell them, I’m as relaxed as a deflated balloon supping cocktails on an all-inclusive holiday.

I’m ready moulded for your vacancy,

it’ll be like cold custard slopped over a smouldering ashtray.


“Just start by telling us what brought you here today.”

Go to hell, I say.

This is no time for pleasantry.

Let’s get down to business, quit the foreplay.

I don’t want to have to run the whole gamut.

I’m convinced this is the best job on the planet.

Of course, I want it. Just give it to me.

I’m an XL tub of tenacity.

I don’t listen to those who tell me what I can and can’t be.

Naysayers don’t speak the same language as me.


I make breakfast every morning,

and every morning I slide it in the bin just to remain hungry.

For me a job is a hobby.

I’ll turn up to work so early that you’ll think I live in the lobby.

You be Mummy, I’ll be Baby.

I’ll pretend to work, and you pretend to pay me.


“Okay, we’ve heard enough,” they say.

Bring home the bacon?

I’ll bring you the whole farmyard.

I’ll let you milk me. Just give me a lanyard…


Suddenly, I’m being led out of the building by security,

and tossed into the street.


Thankfully, my suit is so wide

that I take off like an albatross made of burning paper.

Let’s go champ!


—


pen portrait


I’m the crease in the Sellotape that you thought was the end,

I’m the speed limit sign concealed by a bend,

I’m the monthly subscription you keep forgetting to stop,

I’m the bag that splits just after you’ve left the shop,


I’m the part in the film where you start to lose the plot,

I’m the bruise on your thigh that you don’t know how you got,

I’m the thing you forgot that you’d been to the shop for,

I’m the fart that lingers on the dance floor,


I’m the message you’re about to send when you run out of power,

I’m the comeback you think of later when you’re crying in the shower,

I’m the piece of furniture you keep stubbing your toe on,

I’m the fluff in your belly button,


I’m the workmate who always gets your name wrong,

I’m the one hair on your nipple that gets really long,

I’m the caller that disconnects just as you answer the phone,

I’m the turd on your shoe when you visit a stately home,

the unexpected item in the bagging area,

that’s me.

About the author

John O’Hare is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. He has recently published work with the Manchester Review, Songs of Revolution and Capitalism is a Death Cult by Sunday Mornings at the River Press, Crack the Spine, Fleas on the Dog, the Poetry Lighthouse, and the Writers and Readers Magazine. Much of his work has labour and mental health as its themes, exploring the alienating effect of post-industrial decline and the strangeness of living through it. Virtual home: johnohare.org.uk.

Dave Whitehead

Intro to poems for (Dave Whitehead)


Dave Whitehead’s poems were included here because they show what happens when burnout gets philosophical. Where John O’Hare goes full spiral, Whitehead lingers in the quiet before the collapse—the stretch of time when you’re still trying to act normal but the floor’s already buckling. His language is sharp but ritualistic: the cadence of someone folding the same shirt twelve times because they’re too tired to scream.


In Sanctum, bureaucracy and spiritual fatigue blur until all that’s left is a hymn to entropy. Faith / Ultraviolet takes a microscope to belief, offering a sermon on light, perception, and the blank space between cause and meaning. And The Day After No Tomorrow is a speculative office dream built from scraps of resignation letters and tenderness—the rare kind of poem that makes burnout sound like architecture.


They belong in this section not just because they’re brilliant (they are), but because they prove that emotional collapse isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s ergonomic. Sometimes it sounds like a filing cabinet opening in a church.



The Day After No Tomorrow


The day after no tomorrow

We’d set free our own time

Reckon our own passing

Climb out this wrangling vale

And wander our own path


Promenade

the dry river bed

Waving at them

That rose early

That chose dust

That weep sand

That failed to drown


And on those other downs

We’d spread ourselves

Under the marcescent stars

Til the oil of dawn

A different light indifferent

Of the cosmic schedule


We’d get disorganised:

Table our worries

Action our joy

PowerPoint our flaws

Workshop our fears

Take breaks for tears

And hold, and hold, and hold each other


Measure in thuds

The flow of our blood

The rings of our bones

The sprout of our curious hairs

The breath in our words

The moons of our nails

The vows of our lines


Fights would go on

As long as they have to

The vampire of Sesame Street

Would have nothing to do


The hour wouldn’t rush

Anymore would be enough

Surfeit would suffice

The cost and the price


The day after no tomorrow

Would be forever

And that is all the time I need

With you


—


Faith / Ultraviolet


You’d think

Light

Would be more

Transparent

Articulate

Regale

Rather than

Prevaricate

Around the proverbial

Mean what it says

And show what it means

When it beams

Paint us a picture

In technicolor

Lay its heart bare

And share

All it is


You wouldn’t think

There was so much left

Unsaid

Unshared

Redacted photonic

Enshrouded, sardonic

Cloak and dagger

Need to know

Holier than thou

In its impunity

Diplomatic immunity.

An omission to all

Its secret fringes

Its dazzling shadows


I think

As the great intangible

It does not take us

Into its confidence

But bids us bide

In faith

That by its considered conspiracy

We may see


The liturgy

Of true clemency

Smash apart every particle

And wave of this world

And you will hold not one speck of them

In the palm of your hand

Justice

Mercy

Compassion

Love

Like ultraviolet

They are not seen

But felt.


—


Sanctum


In the old palace places

Where I see my self past

There the old temper paces

And the old bitters fast


The hearths are all ashes

The fire locked in stone

The whiskey in shatters

And the glass stands alone


The windows are blinded

The calendars bare

The gutters all weep

That none venture there


That life keeps on crawling

That laughter, that song

That love keeps on falling

And never stands long


Where justice is trouble

And reckoning a bore

Where redemption is rubble

And desertion is lore


Where I poison and maim

And goad peace into war

Where I whisper and shame

And ravage and core


Where the shadows are cringing

The blank pages glare

The old pain is singing

And looks for me there


It warbles, it dawdles

It perches the door

It weaves its deft maudles

And etches its claw


In the old palace places

Where the patiences fray

I wall myself in

And make virtue my prey.