Brandon's Poetry

The Guy You Work With
By:John Grey

What you want more than anything
is to grab the zebra in your jaws.
Forget the job. Forget teamwork.
Roll the nature film,
You''ve seen your neighbor
in his flashy car.
You've heard the whispers
of bonuses for others
delivered behind locked doors
like secret Mason handshakes.
You just need five minutes or so
of stalking in the dry Savannah grass.
And then one good sniff of your prey
nibbling weeds by a small lagoon.
What better than a slow creep
up behind that unknowing striped back
as deliberate as sharpening a pencil.
And then the pounce,
the real law of the jungle,
you with your fangs around its rump,
it braying in agonizing terror.
What you want from life
is to trot back to your den in triumph,
zebra intestine flapping in your jaw
like spaghetti.
So they don't pay you as much as the next guy.
You're at the point now
that if they paid you in zebras
that would be enough.

Thesis: Through the use of imagery, as well as line breaks and enjambment, Grey presents a poem in which the reader sees an individual’s jealousy of others become savage and inhuman.

Enjambment: The breaking of a syntactic unit (a phrase, clause, or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses.

1) The Poem is written in second person how would it be different if it were in first person?
2) Why does John Grey compare work life to the life of an animal?
3) What is meant by the third line "Roll the nature film"?
4) Who is the poem being written about?
5) Explain what is meant by the last three lines."You're at the point now,that if they paid you in zebras,that would be enough."