Stripped of identity,
slaving on a pittance,
sliced of human dignity.

‘Overheads’,

just jargon,
flung around,
with surgical callousness.
‘Overheads’,

Percentages,
cost-benefit analyses,

metastatise the worker,
a man, a woman, a child,
into fodder,
a number,
reduced to complex variables,

and,
factored into,
the relentless pursuit,
of dead profit.

The noose tightens,
strangling a man, a woman, a child,
all disposable cogs,
in the machinery of greed,

death comes slowly,
laboriously agonising,
asphyxiating a man, a woman, a child,

bludgeoned,
sacrificed,
bayoneted,

at the altar of Capital.

‘Overheads’,

our very own,
mothers, brothers,
sisters, fathers,
lovers, husbands,
wives, friends,

lost to the insatiable machine,
numbed by exhaustion,
wracked by routine,

mere variables,
lost in the hieroglyphics,
of percentages, derivatives, futures,

‘overheads’.