Bureaucracies

are functionally fascist in disguise.
No armed battalions flashing swastikas
to make sure citizens don’t vocalize
their grievances to tacit commissars;
they let them rattle to their heart’s content,
assuming they can find the comments page.
And later on, their grievance can be sent
so they can garner as their proper wage
that “someone will get back to you” who won’t!
A representative democracy
cannot be blamed if electorates don’t
have fortitude to brook hypocrisy.
And be resigned that patience is the word
when customer objections aren’t heard

by corporate heads. For they are scarcely tea
that we can dump in Boston’s harbor when
they tax our patience and autonomy.
Besides, their robots aren’t businessmen.
And what use is America’s free press
if it can’t promulgate its owners views
without according readers a redress?
Accordingly, it gives us cable news,
like CNN, to rally listeners
like demagogues of yore. But they’re no more
accessible than air conditioners
in deserts, or a school of albacore.
in swimming pools. Thus, those who’d hook a catch,
will reel in empty lines from their dispatch.

Born and bred in New Jersey, Frank worked in New York for many years. He loves music from Bach to Amy Winehouse, World Music, Latin, opera. Shakespeare is his consolation, writing his hobby. Frank likes poets Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost, Ginsberg, and Sylvia Plath. Read other articles by Frank.