Bureaucratic Chatter Poem by Zachary Rice

There is another Language
that I can't speak or write
Though I know many people and friends
who are fluent

It's Bureaucratic chatter
and ones and zeros
it's quiet wanting
with no desperation on their face

and when some mornings come
the kind that feel like new beginnings,
they ignore their haunted fates
and whisper with their head down.

They stand in their wingtips
and muted oxfords with buttons on the collar
they tell the secrets of the world in a 42 regular
with pocket squares and tie bars.

Because someone has to keep the lights on,
and make numbers into lines
so the rules can have exceptions,
I quietly stand next to them and listen,
but to me it still sounds foreign.