THROUGH CENTURIES OF JUNE
(  for Pinakini Naik )

The stone
stood its ground.

And waited
for me to run

after it. . .

it had flown through the sky
attached to my cry.

Now it was asleep
in the sun

wrapped in its own
silence.

I grasped it
in a fist.

Let my warmth
enter it.

Then spoke to the stone
in the littlest of sound.

"Stone.?" I addressed it
"Do you want to fly

again into the blue
of summer?"

The stone gave a little shadow
of a smile.

I took that
for its: "yeSSSS!"

My hand flung it
to the far away.

Then: raced after
its parabola.

Time chased me
to a tree with a bird

trapped inside
its song.

My stone lay
at the tree's feet

awaiting the next
throw. .

This world
of two

when friend stone
and I

played
with forever.

The great big blue
smiling with all of its summer.

Parfois, j'ai tellement peur.
J'essaie de me cacher dans ma chambre.
Recroquevillée sur moi-même, les yeux fermés.
J'essaie de me cacher de mes peurs et de ma douleur.
Le monstre ne se cache pas dans mon placard.
Il n'est pas sous mon lit.
Il est à l'intérieur de mon cerveau, caché au plus profond.
Il est le fruit de mon imagination.
Il me laisse terrifié.
La cause de tous mes cauchemars.
Un monstre qui semble bien réel.
Je perds peu à peu le fil de ma réalité.
J'ai du mal à réfléchir.
Je vais me débarrasser de mes peurs.
Avec l'eau de l'évier.

(Sometimes I get so scared.
I try to hide in my room.
Curled up, eyes closed.
I try to hide from my fears and my pain.
The monster isn't hiding in my closet.
It's not under my bed.
It's inside my brain, hidden deep inside.
He's a figment of my imagination.
It leaves me terrified.
The cause of all my nightmares.
A monster that seems very real.
I'm gradually losing touch with reality.
It's hard to think.
I'm going to get rid of my fears.
With water from the sink.)

Tonight I am 26
At a concert
Standing so close to the girl in front of me
I can smell her perfume
And coconut shampoo-
I am swaying with the crowd
And the person next to me
Has an expression of pure joy across her face
Vibrant lights race across the room
Revealing hundreds of people
Who are feeling what I am feeling.
We throw our hands in the air
And allow ourselves to escape reality
For just one night.

Tonight-
I am alive.
We are alive.

nailed to the mast
hoisted flag

feet on the earth
head in the sky

a shared fulfilled vocation
- giving birth to songs.

Staplers and hole-punch
Paper, signatures, and stamps
Busy, busy work
Audit error, office closed
Oncoming apocalypse

---

“If you are viewing this instructional video, you may be having some glitches with your audit processes. Don’t panic. From time to time, any bureaucracy worth its hole-punch will need to conduct an audit.

Daily dandy-desk-documented fun
Standard sunny-systematised-stapled hijinks

However, sometimes, there is a clerical error, or worse, a process deviation. If this occurs during an ordinary, 8:45am-5:20pm workday, the standard review process can be implemented, commencing on the same day, should the error be detected before 12pm, and if later than 12pm, commencing on the next working day. The typical review timelines can then follow, ideally 3-5 business days for information gathering, followed by committee consideration dependent on the 6-weekly cycle and agenda length.

Expected. Thorough. Busy. Reassuring.
All systems nominal.
Stamping and signing rates above baseline.
Working hard, at a sensible, sustainable pace. Amiright?

Unfortunately, occasionally,
something cataclysmic happens
bottom right on the risk matrix
(likelihood=E (rare) x consequence=5 (catastrophic))

Hold onto your staplers…
A fault occurs during the audit.
An audit error in the error audit.
This results in the dreaded, circular,
Paper Ouroboros Paradox.  
At this point, the
perfectly procedured
copybook committeed
faultlessly filed
bureaucracy
will implode.

The only way of avoiding POP is
a concurrent process to audit the
audit, we call this The Meta Audit.  
The bookish amongst you may want to say
that would increase the circularity
(moving POP from likelihood=E, to D!)
Don’t worry, we run the Meta Meta
Audit to make sure that never happens.

Our favourite galactic bureaucrat avatars, the Vogons, were the first race to encounter the pure, paper-curling hell of TMA. That is why these instructions are written in poetry, of sorts. But not Vogon-authored poetry, of course, even though
the quality
and honestly
the policy
of the potential use
of these directions
or sections
or connections
for torture
Have never been directly investigated.

The KPI for TMA is known as the
Kafka-Cockroach Distance
measured in imaginary cockroach lengths (icL).

Under potential conditions of
POP, the TMA KPI KCD starts at
42 icL
     and counts down with
     every fatal meta error:
       -Information presented to audit
         committee in triplicate
         instead of quadruplicate,
41 icL
      -Audit presentation containing
        27 slides instead of 26,
        as clearly outlined,
40 icL
     -Email about colonoscopy sent
       to audit address list instead of mum,
39 icL
     And so on.

You’ll know when you reach 17 icL,
You’ll see the cockroaches.
Conveniently, this makes measurement simpler

Now you know how to calculate your Kafka-Cockroach Distance, you can audit your audits with perfect assurance and insurance.

---

This bureaucracy
Kafkaesque catastrophe
Dear Douglas Adams
Thanks for giving me words for
Processing my processes