Sentence "Death by Bureaucracy"


Revenge

Frail and halting
Yet with an iron core
Obviously indigent
She walked unaided
Along this hall of honor
Leading to the kitchen
Portraits of past directors
Hung at precise intervals
A synopsis of their deeds
On parchment below
She stood at each and
Read the document then
Slowly with a black spray
paint can"X'd each picture
Then moved on to the next
Finally subdued by a guard
She sat quietly awaiting
Law and justice
Her mind recalling a time
Long past
When she began the dream
Which others called a vision
That the hungry must be fed
Her kitchen open to all
Her passion was her undoing
Her kitchen grew and attracted
Those who valued empires
More than indigents
They brought her funds and plans
She declined at first fearful
But finally acquiesced
In favor of her need to feed her charges
Insidiously they worked to push her from
Her leadership claiming her lack
Of organizational skills
Was harming all she had accomplished.
They promised growth and care
But delivered structure and bureaucracy
The indigents those she helped so well
Knew the game and disappeared
The organization claimed
Their absence proved its success
To satisfy their need for recognition
They created this hall and awarded
Each successive director
A portrait a place of honor
Except for her.






Poetry by josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 636 times
Written on 2013-03-08 at 12:24

dott Save as a bookmark (requires login)
dott Write a comment (requires login)
dott Send as email (requires login)
dott Print text


Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
This is a fine poem, Joe, but why did the phrase "of the people, by the people, and for the people," pop into my mind after I read it?
2013-03-10


countryfog
I'm familiar with several similar stories, someone who wanted only to open her heart and her kitchen to those without love or food, until the Health Department found out and put an end to such unlicensed beneficence. In a way too this takes me back sixty-plus years, to just after WWII, when hoboes were a fairly common presence, some missing a limb, others damaged in ways less evident, coming to our door and my mother never ever turning one away without feeding him and perhaps a dollar.
The world then was, if not simpler, more circumscribed, bordered in more personal ways, and kinder too it seems from this now long distance.
2013-03-09


ngaio Beck
Well done Joe. Truer words I've not read.
2013-03-09