he worked on the first floor
he was one of the first people I met
I remember mistaking him for someone else
he had been there as long as furniture and dust
and I misread that for authority, clout, something

on the second floor were the writers
detatched, hethens, paid to make themselves into problems
so management could talk to their wives, stories of the impossibilty,
they were a bore without the daily whinings of writers,
not worth fucking, worth salsbury steak

when it happened the shelves in the cubicle nearly killed me
they didnt crash but lean towards me
he was a sports writer or a movie critic, one forgets
but when when took the stairs down to the first floor to see what had happened
we saw a man crushed by an elevator, spasms, throat gurgling,
he reached for his fake teeth, put them back in his mouth and died.
It was the man I mistaked for some one important
his name was Henry Miller.

we never stopped to think about what others thought after we saw
that man put in his teeth