#bureaucracy
The woman at immigration control
looks at me
like she personally invented borders.
I hand her seventeen documents
proving I exist.
Utility bills.
Bank statements.
A lease agreement emotionally stronger
than most modern relationships.
She says:
“You forgot page four.”
Of course I did.
Europe is a continent built entirely
around tiny missing papers.
Behind me, a French couple is arguing quietly
with the intimacy of people
who have suffered IKEA together.
I suddenly miss my mother.
Not dramatically.
Not cinema-style.
Just a small sharp feeling:
she would have known which folder to use.
That’s grief after thirty-five.
Not crying in churches.
Just standing under fluorescent lighting
wanting someone to organize your documents gently.
Outside, it starts raining sideways.
A man in a navy coat holds the door for me.
Beautiful hands.
Calm face.
Wedding ring.
Tragic.
Naturally.
Then he turns around.
“Page four,” he says quietly.
And hands me a folded paper
from his own folder.
I don’t ask why.
Neither does the woman.
She stamps my passport.
Outside, rain continues sideways.
He lights a cigarette
and walks away
without saying goodbye.
I never learn his name.
But for one minute
a stranger with a wedding ring
carried my missing page.
This is not love.
This is bureaucracy
with accidental tenderness.
And unfortunately,
that’s enough to make me believe
in something.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 8:00 AM UTC
The woman on the hotline
keeps calling me sir
with the emotional warmth
of automated lighting
I explain the problem twice
somewhere in the background
a printer suffers continuously
A child cries briefly
then disappears from the call
which somehow makes everything sadder
Eventually she says:
“I understand your frustration.”
which is statistically unlikely
Outside
rain turns the parking lot
into low-budget philosophy
Cars idle patiently
under fluorescent weather
The call disconnects
without warning
without apology
without resolution
To be fair
it understood the assignment
May 2
May 2, 2026 at 12:49 PM UTC
"Hello, sir. I would like to apply for—"
"I know, I know.
Everybody wants the same.
But it's too late, my friend.
You're too old"
Always the same conversation.
I'm too old.
Or I haven't done certain things.
"No, you should've studied this",
they say.
"You can't enter the program"
They always say the same things.
Or at least—
they will.
Mar 7
Mar 7, 2026 at 10:43 AM UTC
A form to start,
A form to end,
A stamp to prove,
I can pretend;
A signature,
To make it true,
A rule that says,
“I own you too”;
This isn’t bars,
This isn’t steel,
It’s paper walls,
That still feel real;
We trade our freedom,
Day by day,
For little comfort,
And steady pay.
Feb 23
Feb 23, 2026 at 9:40 AM UTC
i logged the warheads’ saintly arc,
through treaties transcribed just to shrink,
while taboo colonized the dark,
a name is never worth the ink.
i processed breath in programmed loops,
the margins where the righteous blink,
between the cables and the troops,
a name is never worth the ink.
each border twitched in nitrate maps,
the walls revised in auto-sync,
i traced the bloodstained autographs,
a name is never worth the ink.
she entered nothing but a tag,
a field in forms that didn’t think,
her voice absorbed by final lag,
a name is never worth the ink.
the city burned in filament,
the state dreamed red and blue in sync,
we lost her in the precedent,
a name is never worth the ink.
the cat observed, the shutters closed,
she left a toothbrush by the sink,
her absence, not to be disclosed,
a name is never worth the ink.
the archives hum. the geiger talks.
my shell is built where memos clink.
they tested God beneath the rocks:
a name is never worth the ink.
deterrence smiles with sober teeth,
bureaucracy demands a link,
but all that lives remains beneath,
a name is never worth the ink.
Jun 22, 2025
Jun 22, 2025 at 4:49 AM UTC
The civil servants
are angry with their colleagues:
so bureaucratic!
Dec 12, 2022
Dec 12, 2022 at 3:41 AM UTC
One Summers’ evening I gazed out
In wonder at the sky.
I saw one star was moving
as the ISS flew by.
A Shining Beacon always there
it’s man’s forget-me-not.
A thousand years of progress made
this small white flashing dot.
But “Houston there’s a problem”
Calls out Major Tom one day
“Unauthorized transmissions
Beamed at us from the UK.”
“Hello” the astronauts they called
“What is it that you need?”
The terse reply – “You crossed our village
carrying excess speed.”
“Oh yes! We clocked you as you passed
Across our Kingsmead Tower.
We clocked your speed at ten thousand
four Hundred miles per hour.
Please keep your speed to 20
As you traverse through our stars,
And watch out crossing Monarch Drive
For dangerously parked cars.
So as you cross the stars in search
Of Scientific Treasures
Be aware we’re contemplating
Traffic calming measures.”
Apr 21, 2020
Apr 21, 2020 at 10:28 AM UTC
The waves are dredged along. Under the constant gaze
of the shimmering top floor moon.
Down to each second to each hour.
But, you are the angel fish, floating
free
beneath the cover of these tides.
Your shoals guide, the humble anglers
home
a silver blonde amongst the bigwigs,
The local red army, clothed in Cex shirts,
not needing an October symphony,
but now I sing your praises.
The bag you gave, though I had no 5 pence to spare,
lightened my load as much as any camel
along the silk road.
My journey is eased,
by your projected hope that my railcard,
will be renewed in future,
for your faith gives promises the
weight
of Gold.
You allow me to watch the guided heroes in explosive flames,
despite my smuggling
of Jelly babies under a hoodie.
For the shimmer in
Your
eyes, I will leave no litter,
for those with the blonde glittered scales,
From cold night, let the sun rule,
And the sea shall shimmer too.
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 1:03 PM UTC
Are you down on your luck?
short on change?
no place to go?
caught in the rain?
Just **** it up & don't complain.
you're on your own - that's capitalism!
if you're poor you
deserve what you are
cause they're rich for a reason
the things they believe in
social darwinism its
survival of the fittest its
living for yourself dont
mess with no one else
and if you don't make it
then you just couldn't take it
and you don't deserve to live anyway...
do you need an out ?
is there no way in?
are you just waiting
for your life to begin?
Well clearly you don't deserve to win.
They won't help - that's capitalism!
The people who make it
clearly won't break it
cause they have the smarts
to succeed in the art of money.
So give'm all the funds
watch it trickle down and run.
It's a free market, so
let it loose, watch it go.
If there's monopoly
they want you to let it be
its only a kids game to them. . .
no pain no gain.
but if it's not their pain
their result's the same.
but what have we gained?
Is life a dead end
in the land of the free?
ruled by the rich-
a bureaucracy.
No end in sight that we can see.
Our legacy- is capitalism.
Mar 2, 2018
Mar 2, 2018 at 3:08 PM UTC
[A child of indeterminate sex--either a delicate-featured boy or a tomboy-ish girl--, 9 or 10 years old, enters the chamber where the United States Council of Artists is meeting.]
"Is this the United States Council of Artists?"
[The Chairman of the Council responds:] "Yes. Who are you?"
"That doesn't matter. Are all the high arts present? Poetry, Music, the Visual Arts?"
"Yes. . . . There are people from all the various arts here. . . ."
"The Hour of your Doom is upon you."
"What do you mean?"
"You've failed to create with feeling.
Nuclear angst no longer excuses you.
Moral uncertainty, the dissolution of society,
no longer excuses you.
The 'Death of God' no longer excuses you.
Human beings have not changed.
We are not the hollow men.
Great art
comes from the heart;
your superfluities will now depart.
"Painter! Isn't it true that the same day you started work on this [holding up a reproduction of the painting "Incongruities: White Lines, Pink Lines"] you visited a hardware store with a middle-aged clerk whose face was wonderfully sad and quizzical? That as you walked home the pattern of the sun shining through the trees onto the sidewalk was marvelously variegated?
"Composer! Tell me honestly [playing a cassette recording of "Duet in F-Minor for Flute and Woodblock"] that these rhythmless sounds move you. . . . It's made with the head, completely with the head.
"Poet! Isn't it true that you've never written any poems expressing your deepest feelings: your love of your older sister; the painful growing-apart of you and your wife leading up to your divorce; your hatred of the stuffy academics who denied you tenure; the passion you felt for that Australian girl on Corfu last summer. . . . Instead you've written these [holding up a book entitled Root Crops, No Metaphors and reading from it:]
translucent, magenta-veined root-tips
push, cell by cell, into humid grit;
dark green, dark-red-veined crowns
expand profligately sunward. . . .
"Great art
speaks to the heart;
your superfluities will now depart."
[Another Council member:] "Mr. Chairman, with all due respect to this --surprisingly eloquent-- young person, I suggest that we return to the business at hand which is" [consulting his agenda] "the allocation this fiscal year for haiku in South Dakota."
Aug 1, 2017
Aug 1, 2017 at 1:39 PM UTC
here’s what i’ll do
a good british thing
i’ll queue
get to the front, lean on the counter
(chipped and worn and scratched formica)
‘One memory preservation order please’
(it always pays to be polite)
‘That’s not how it works, here’s the form’
(form i can)
thankyouthankyouthanksverymuch
many boxes to tick
many scratches to itch
complete finally, submitted with its
appropriate fee
in a few weeks, two or three
i’ll receive
an unbreakable, unviolatable
memory
Jan 15, 2016
Jan 15, 2016 at 3:17 PM UTC
We all go around the day,
We are all on our way,
Some are to work,
Some are to school,
We are all part of a bigger picture;
I’m just a fragment,
And you are so too,
Our lives are together,
A part of the matter;
We have been taught,
Alone we are worthless,
We have been moulded,
To fit into the system,
But this is no way,
To reach our full potential;
This is a prison,
Guarded by bureaucracy,
And funded by those in power,
We gave up our freedom,
For a little bit of money;
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 8:22 AM UTC
They're silent now.
No more endless empty words.
The previously clean paper that was so hastily cluttered up with meaningless drivel to justify their already decided plans, now sit unreadable.
Not a word is being spoken now as a look of stunned surprise on faces that once were clean, smug, and pretty as a picture would look pale from shock if they were visible and not now bathed in blood and fragments of brain.
A brain that once was so full of thoughts, experiences, images, hopes and dreams.
A brain of a person that had done so much and wanted to do so much more, but was so ground down by the struggle to convince others.
A mind that for a split-second forgot who possessed it and forgot the people he so loved, that would be so hurt from this one, fleeting, solitary moment of madness.
But how can this brain that was put to such good use, now be splattered on tables, across walls, and over the last two inconsequential people to have ever seen me before this act?
By taking a gun from my bag, quietly and without emotion, into my hand, pressing firmly into the bottom of my mouth, all it took was a quick snap of a finger to metaphorically stick two up to them, and to all the others who couldn't give a **** slicing a hole straight through me, launching a cascade of blood and body tissue into the air, across the room, and over the representation of all that has hurt me.
The decisions they make so easily, in the comfort of their own lives, without a thought for the human cost and waste of talent and potential, becomes just ink on paper.
But that pen became a dagger, ripping out my heart; and the paper that only moments ago was being filled up with my pain has now become the blood-drenched ocean of my soul.
You couldn't or wouldn't see what was on my mind and inside my head before, but you certainly can't miss it now, as it drips down your cheek.
I wanted to wipe away that empty and meaningless look I saw on your faces as you mechanically noted down my comments that I knew meant nothing to you and would go no further.
So now do your best to flick off the blood and please make sure it's all properly written up, reported on, and filed away neatly, in the organisationally detached way that all good little servants and agents of pain and misery always do.
It's so much easier to do the devil's work when it's not happening to you or anyone you care about. Wrap yourself up in the policies and procedures; insulate yourself from the person; do only what the rules say; comforting yourself in the 'organisational justification' for change; and breathe a sigh of relief it's not you or those you care for or love - at least not yet.
Through the red of the blood soaked window, a bird flies free.
What drastic steps to have taken for that to be me.
But the bird now flies home to its loved one and chicks, but sadly this will not now be for me. There's only so much a person can take.
But when will those with power and privilege see and care?
Usually not till it's far too late, as they now sit there dripping in what used to rush through my veins, giving me life and a reason to be.
I hope your reason to be, your actions and disinterest, has been worth it?
Your memory of my last breath into your face and my head exploding into your eyes might just act as a reminder.
When you see reports about an atrocity splashed across the news, and hear the repeated cries of "why?", maybe the answer for the one responsible might just be "well, why not?"
But that might be too difficult to fathom in this shallow, myopic, sound-bite driven world, so hooked on demonising, labelling as mad, and looking for easy answers for want of anything more useful.
From knee-jerk reaction and tireless and narrow 'Daily Mail' rants against anyone or anything that doesn't fit their limited view of the world.
Most things don't just happen for no reason.
The reasons might be hard to see for many, especially when they don't want to see, but for those driven to such desperation they are likely quite rational to them in their world, with their experiences, their pressures, their pain, and their responses, or lack of anything beneficial from others.
When potentially destructive seeds are planted and their care is continually ignored, or their roots so callously ripped away, don't be surprised if something unwanted grows.
Maybe firmer foundations, better planting, regular watering, and careful appropriate tending would go a long way to help.
Copyright: Gordon Warren (10/1/13)
Jun 22, 2014
Jun 22, 2014 at 4:23 PM UTC