ODE TO JIM

ODE TO JIM

He waters the roses, aligns every stem,
Snips with precision the florist’s condemned.
He hums as he trims, with his plastic shears bright,
While wisdom around him dims out of sight.

He jests with a wink, calls his act “a delight,”
Though the sharpest among us just wince at the sight.
He clowns for applause from the newly confused,
While the clear-minded elders sit mildly amused.

He rules with a binder and colorful charts,
With forms signed in triplicate, be still our hearts!
Security, joy, and welfare, you see,
Are footnotes beneath his phony decree.

Speak up with ideas, suggestions, or grace,
He'll smile like sunshine and put you in place.
“Now, now,” he will say, “just don’t get upset,”
As he looks down his nose to impose your regret.

He lies when he must, then shrugs when he's caught,
Says, “I don’t recall,” though he clearly ought.
And when facts are laid bare and his words unspool,
He gaslights with flair from the Bureaucrat’s School.

He’s baffled by those who once ran the world,
Whose names once made senators fidget and swirl.
To him, we are gentle, soft clay to be shaped,
Our pasts overwritten, our brilliance erased.

Yet give him a tulip, a hydrangea blue,
And watch him go manic with ribbon and glue.
There, in his kingdom of petals and stems,
He reigns with the power of mid-level gems.

So here’s to the man with the childish tone,
Whose castle is flowers in the twilight zone.
He may condescend, deceive, and deflect,
But we know a fool by his pretentious effect.

And though he may strut with a puffed-up chest,
The wise here will smile, and quietly jest.
For titles mean little, and flair even less,
For his elders shake off his attempt to impress.

WJS