John Arthur

I REACHED OUT AND AM AWAITING A RESPONSE

I’m the Lebron James of local bureaucrats. Give me a project and I’ll manage it step by step like a PMP using the waterfall method. I’m shooting eighty-three percent with these crumpled up reports, my desk as a backboard for this waste paper basket. I’ve got ninety-nine passwords stored in my head and I can estimate the total square footage of a building with just one glance. I rotate the same two pairs of pants.And once per year when I go to FranceI refuse to check my email. Someone else can pick up the refuse.I’m just eating snails and strolling Montmarte buying street art which I’ll hang from the walls of my cubicle in city hallhoping someone will ask where I found it but no one ever does and look, it’s not that I’m trying to stall it’s just for each decision I’ve gotta call a committee. This shit is still a democracy even when the ballots are clouded with Meta’s pixelated prop gun smoke and I denote I shall not poke the sleeping commissioner who right now is bumbling through a speech written by a Rutgers college intern who uses AI to craft policy briefs in their briefs and listen, everyone knows New Jersey spends the most per square mile on repaving its roads. Pot holes like pock marks on my face. With legal pot to fill any shortfallsin our budgets which barely budgeeven when everyone’s taxes go up faster than a luxury apartment complex.And before nodding out I hear your voice again and again saying Yes, please hold,I’ll transfer you now. —from Poets Respond
May 5, 2024

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John Arthur: “The Lakers lost in the NBA playoffs and my news feeds have been inundated with debate over whether Lebron James is the greatest basketball player of all time or whether it’s Michael Jordan. That prompted the ‘I’m the Lebron James of local bureaucrats’ opening, and the rest of the poem just came out basically as is. By the way, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the greatest of all time.”

Related* “Sad Robots” by James Arthur * “Major Tom Turns into Light” by Colin Pope * “Gravity in Jerusalem” by Arthur Russell