20150825 (bureaucracy)

Steven Root as Michael Waddams an addled employee in Office Space a
character with whom I identify and at that time resemble

Once when they sent me home for a week 

Mostly because my boss refused

To see things my way rather than sink 

Into the slough of despond 

That was disciplinary suspension

I looked back into my files for a

Period when I had served honorably

The powers at the top authoring

Their speeches responding to complaints

Founding editing their newspaper

Conceiving advertising and guiding

Their reorganization plans the 

Mechanicals of how I fell from grace

Are still unknown but it clearly 

Involved no longer having access 

To the highest ear in the system

My connection severed I was assigned

To become a futureless functionary 

I carried my apparatchik demeanor

In what I thought satisfactory performance 

It may have had something to do 

With once going over the head of

A regional official to complain he 

Was screwing me locally by not 

Responding quickly enough to 

My correspondence an excoriating

Telephone call resulted in which I

Was advised that my status would

Soon be such as to envy worms who

Consumed the eyes of the dead

How dare I depart from the chain

Of command he seemed irritated

Without so much as a how do you do

I soon found myself in the sticks 

Assigned to replacing a man 

Who chose to gracefully retire

Than be removed from the rolls 

Of the employed that’s what they called firing 

For ever so gradually going nutso on the job

Trying to get my bearings for the work

I ran across all sorts of evidence he

Was wack needed to be ousted

He left me no tidy administrative

Trail to follow to fulfill my new tasks

Nor was there good guidance from above

In fact all of us in that particular

Section were persona non grata

Totally peripheral to the mainstream 

Of the business authorities above us 

Wobbled in out from death retirement

Nothing settled or well-defined

Just don’t fuck up they offered 

Bring undue attention to hand 

Keep things rolling until I get out 

Were all organizations governed by 

Sucking up as this bureaucracy was

You needed the script from

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

To know you whether you were

Dealing with a patient or the staff

I later heard the guy who tried to fire me

Not just once but twice moved to Texas

Where he continued pissing everyone off

c. J.S.Manista, 2015