By Martin Hayes
some people say that angels don’t exist
but I don’t believe in any of their crap
the people are full of it
I prefer to believe that angels do exist
because I see them every day at my work
Dolores is an angel
the way she takes the new recruits after they’ve made a mistake
sits with them in her office going over and over again
the procedures and protocols they need to follow
slow step by slow step
so that mistake doesn’t happen again
and the new recruit can then stride out of there
full of confidence and vigour
to go and try and do it all over again
when all the other supervisors
would just rip off their heads
in front of everyone else
spit their future out like a piece of phlegm
hacked up from the back of their hideous throats
Stacey is an angel too
the way ever since she got promoted
she absorbs all of that man-talk in there
about her being ‘in the big boy’s room now’
how she’ll need to calm that ‘thing’ inside her
that makes ‘people like you
flip out at the slightest inconvenience’
all that passive aggressiveness
men have inherently rooted in them
like a very rotten fruit
that grows to a kind of stink
whenever 15 of them are gathered inside one control room
and then there’s Jamaal in the warehouse
he is an angel
the way nothing is ever too much trouble for him
coming in at 1am when needed
and still being there at 7pm
with a smile always on his face
and a warmth exuding from him
that has no right to exist
demons on the other hand
all of the people believe in them
because every time something goes wrong
we see them come out of their offices like giant bats
with their hair standing up and their teeth bared
all wanting to know why this’s and why that’s
swearing in that way that isn’t part of normal language
but viscous and hurtful
like they’ve got this bomb in their hands
that they could detonate at any moment over you and your family’s life
if you aren’t humble enough
if you don’t get down on one knee
it was really hard in there
to believe that angels existed
but very easy to understand
why demons did
The Bosses of the Senate, a cartoon by Joseph Keppler, public domain.
