Bureaucratic Anatomy

Back a ways we called it ‘Bum-Lip Bureaucracy’ 

aggrandised by Authorities who’ve wrested their 

worn-as-halos kudos eked from thin-sanctioned 

air-dressed ‘conceit’; & theirs’s a false prophesy 

where we get to see only what matters to them - 

Doesn’t take much imagination to see it spread; 

and like any quality disease it has blended neat 

and seamlessly into hundreds of years of same, 

same, policy-formulated expressions for effects 

lost in a morass of old bureaucratic assonance 

But in writing it I’m reminded where the bum-lip 

bit comes into play; nowhere’s the ‘clearer than 

jeopardy’ sense displayed than listening to that 

well-established descriptive ‘crap’ they express 

as the appropriate way to say NO to anything … 

© 23 February 2017, I. D. Carswell 

* Illustration copyright as shown above