Nobody has ever said
I would like to grow up
to one day be a bureaucrat.
Or a sinecure; listless
at a desk in the afternoon
staring at immigrant landscapers
from an office window
like they are flowers
in a garden, wet with sweat
from guarding the marigolds
against imperialist insects,
moving across the tableau,
the manicured lawns of America
like checkers on a board
only ever vaguely aware
there’s a sycophant who sits
and watches them pull at weeds
while he himself feels stuck
like a staple in a stack
of papers—sifting through time
sheets and blank accounts
receivables, waiting for someone
to come and pluck him out
of his hole like a dandelion
and help him remember when,
wiping his brow against the sun
and waiting on a gust of wind
he would hold the stem,
and watch each seed
blowing slowly away
one by one,
until he was left
with nothing.