The Terrible Tale of Allison Lawson

May 14, 2009 at 10:24 am · Filed under Poems and tagged: may happen to another, what happens to one good woman

This poem is subject to the time and constraints of arriving at work at 9AM so ignore, if you feel able to, the many errors…

Allison Lawson was aged twenty-three

And employed at an eminent firm.

She had done much to achieve her place

In the tier which other’s sore failures had earned her.

On the brass coloured plate, by the sliding glass doors

Three, unrelated, directors announced

Houser, and Houser and Bigglesworth-Brunch

A more impressive lot one could not pronounce.

In a stark little room with a very nice view

Allison sat through the day writing odes

Odes to the court, and odes to a God

That sits atop papers in storerooms.

Very quickly indeed the years passed her by

And Allison remained at that place.

She earned higher wage and wore nicer suits

And generally cut a good corporate pace.

But by age twenty-nine the bucolic shine

Of her career for the firm took a spin.

She erred in her drafting and around her the rafters

Of a case, destructed, of a case, she wouldn’t win.

Our Allison had not realised before then

That with every success comes a failure,

And so with the revealing of her fallibility

Her whole sense of self had been injured.

Allison Lawson, aged 29,

Of Houser, and Houser and Bigglesworth-Brunch

Now faced a future, much bleaker than her hopes

And her hopes then had not been much.

As if spurred by the first incurable failure

It suddenly seemed as if cursed

All that she touched, all comments she uttered,

were incorrect, verbiose, or worse.

Rapidly, rapidly, speeding away

Were her dreams of acclaim and of worth

As Allison Lawson descended to doubt

And erred in a way execused at first,

But then became use, or reason at least

To make her a subject of demotion.

Unable to bear the unbearable strain

Of the errors she’d heinously committed

Allison continued to falter in every correction

And in every draft document submitted.

Incorrect syntax, missing letters and names,

Incorrect law and bad drafting

She spiralled and spiralled down to the ground

The bottom of the ladder, to admin.

Until one day  she found she was stripped of her title,

She was typing up tables and cleaning,

While the tasks were acceptable and the money alright, well,

Allison found this demeaning.

After many more months in which she built up her strength

She decided one day she would face him

Bigglesworth-Brunch, the best of the bunch,

Allison vowed it would be she who replaced him.

She knocked on that door of the office, top floor,

And waited to be invited to enter,

But time then ensued and she was yet to be viewed

So, she resigned, to intrude and face censor.

Allison Lawson, aged 29, and Bigglesworth-Brunch, 44,

Looked at each other with disparate glares,

One of horror and one of mortal destitution.

The coroners came and they took him away

Leaving Allison aseat at his desk

With two empty pill packets, beside empty files,

Beside empty drawers, and signed cheques.

It seems all this time, she’d erred and declined

He’d risen and refined skills in illusion

While she’d admitted her mistakes and suffered their wake

He’d succeeded through other’s delusion.

She left work that day and she never went back

And I’ve heard it said she now works as a baker.

Why she made this election, realising  corporate selection,

Is perhaps based on how she would wish to meet her maker.

In any event I believe she’s content

To the regular event of one fallen loaf in her dozen.

She throws these away, before carrying a tray

Of twelve good loaves fresh from the oven.

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