volatiles

this room
this office room
where droplets in the air condense
like vague ideas and run down walls
where obedience and protocol perspire
vaporous guilt complicit mist settling
on the hard-worked bent-headed
lower orders desk-bound slaves
breathing for want of anything
else to do

I inhale you
and all your toiletries
all your scented moments
sharp as advertised attractive
as the chemical signature of a soul
you the aerosol that masks your flesh
that hides the rot of fear your face averted
look away now the fine emulsion you exhale
hangs in the half-lit glare of an outside world
separated from this plasticised carpet prison’s
tri-glazed windows that need no bars
deodorised to air-con silence
hissing with data-streams
poisoning the ears
with its lies

my breath
and yours fogs the panes
smogs the distance between us
for all our cleanliness and godliness
our next-to-impossible perfection corrodes
like metal as the years eat it away
leaches into the foundations
of our ordered world
a sump of decay
by-products
of futility

© BH, 2019

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Poetry24 - the Facebook page - has started a 'Word for the Weekend' slot. As before, take a word, relate that work to a news article and write a poem from what you find. This weekend it was 'Human'.

I found the following:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326600.php
Human breath may significantly affect office air quality
Medical News Today - 9th October 2019

This is the poem that arrived. Memories of call-centres, stifled morale and electronic sweat sprang immediately to mind.