Poem: "Eight Hours Are Not a Day" at "Northwest Indiana Literary Journal"

At some point between the time the below poem was written in 2011 and the time my corresponding collection Fassbinder: His Movies, My Poems was published by Anxiety Press in 2024, the favored English title assigned to RWF's terrific miniseries switched from Eight Hours Are Not a Day to Eight Hours Don't Make a Day. [When I used google to translate the original German Acht Stunden sind kein Tag, the result was neither of those but Eight Hours Is Not a Day.] In other words, translating from German to English can be almost as tricky as translating from art form to literary form (i.e., film to poetry). In truth, my "Eight Hours Are Not a Day" owes possibly as much to Anne Sexton's "Music Swims Back to Me" as RWF's five episodes for West German Broadcasting Cologne. So whatever the sources and titles may be, I'm happy to report the poem was republished at Northwest Indiana Literary Journal on Dec. 15, 2025.

Eight Hours Are Not a Day

It’s time to sing about work:

Fa-la-la. Time to sing about Monday

through Friday and the 9 to 5, time

to sing about filing and faxes and phones,

time to whistle in even a dwarfish way

even as your friend in the neighboring

cubicle tells you to shut up then calls

security to have you taken away. Okay.

It’s time to find a workaday rhythm,

time to tap into that inner song,

to find the motivating melody unique

to sitting in a chair all the livelong

day, an ergonomic chair designed to guard

your body from the wear and tear.

It’s time to celebrate that in key.

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la. That’s so off-key.

Birthdays and business calls aside,

the offices of America are respectfully

hushed. Listen closely. Listen hard.

Listen to the muted clack of the keyboards,

the hum of fluorescents overhead,

the quiet crunch of metal folding in

upon itself as a stapler does its job.

Collapse. Open your soda in silence. Psst.

Listen further. Listen deeply.

Don your Chinese, cushioned headphones

and hear the tinny sound of music that’s

hi-NRG, enter the discotheque inside your head,

a dance club designed for drones who now can

bop back and forth to tiny sound waves

that might be signals of distress. Or not.

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la. Fa-la-la-la-la.

The poem "Eight Hours Are Not a Day" was originally published in Work Literary Magazine on Apr. 1, 2013. Photo Credit: The above still is by Peter Gauhe, courtesy of DFF – German Film Institute & Film Museum / Peter Gauhe Collection.