Power-point’s up and running now
The speaker rubs his hands
Talks of vision, values, virtues,
Strategies and plans
Headlines, views, he makes a joke
And everybody smirks
His pauses, between ‘salient’ points
We’d almost think it works
His colleagues nod and shake their heads
Agreeing with his words
They scan the room, checking the mood
It all looks quite absurd
We play the game, we write things down
We question and we smile
We work in groups, we take some risks
And ponder for a while
Water supplies are running dry
And sweets are going too
Pouring it, unwrapping them
Gives us some stuff to do
‘What time is check-in? When’s next break?’
Our colleagues mime to us
‘I need the loo’. ‘Oh, God me too’.
But no-one makes a fuss
We know the rules, the etiquette
We know that we must care
We know that going home when bored
Is naughty – we don’t dare
Transparency – the word is used,
But this is not the way
We’ll talk transparency, but we
Won’t be that thing today
Learning? But how? We have to break
The social rules to change
The way we see the world and life.
And things to rearrange
But no, we’re all professionals
We nod, and shake, and write
And all the words we say today
Will fade into the night
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