Nine to Five

I think of the lives I would've built,
the stories that would occupy my memory.
I ponder freedom from my four by four guilt,
my possibilities shrunken to a screen...
never far from me.

I wonder at my capabilities, limits never tested,
triumphs and falls never felt, never tucked away.
My current is short, ever diminished, ill invested,
and I think of the lives in front of me, and
I have no part to play.

As a child, my accomplishment were trivial,
yet I so fondly recall them, calmed by them, proud.
When life was for fun, for love, for art, for all...
I ran, I cried with tears, I loved, I trusted...
I lived out loud.

Now here I sit...wasting time with inefficiencies,
so inappropriately using desk space to play.
What beowulf storm, what tempest treacherous seas,
took me from my childhood to this dream fallen,
adulterated day?

When did this become all of me?