The Bureaucrat

The bureaucrat’s day was coming to an end his windows were shut and his cigarettes out, his badly-kept books were closed away. Down the boulevard where the money-sacks on wheels roam, and the people choking on their golden nuggets strut, are the trees that have seen so much, and wish to be put down, yes and these trees are the trees, facing the bureaucrat’s house. A Friday evening his wife makes him a lovely meal, the haggard hunchback wolfed it down with great zeal, but he was not fat, and his wife kept wondering where her pie all went. Turns out he had another woman, like an extra hand to test a new lipstick on he used his mistress to test his love, he wondered if the waters tainted with irrationality still brought the flame they used to bring, and all the pie was disappearing in that effort. He used to accompany the woman that came to his vulgar call, a whistle, an embarrassment to be echoed for the ages with every shrinking wall that exposed her, they used to greet each other, then they greeted each other no more. The meetings had grown cold and bitter, her jealousy had soured their lake, but the bed was made, and they knew it all along, they stopped meeting and they forget their special song. By time his wife realised when the town’s gossip danced a zigzag dance in the golden forest, cutting down everything in the gossip’s path, and with great sorrows she tied herself to the pavement, leaving behind a skinny an, so small, unimportant, bruised ego and no honour, if he comes crawling and calling and on lonely nights you hear his whistle, I urge you to heed my message and stay away from the little bureaucrat on the boulevard as he chokes on his solitude.