They handed me the pages,
cold and swollen with nonsense,
sentences puffed like dead fish
on a polluted shore.
A simple thought strangled,
wrapped in jargon’s iron fist,
bleeding meaning across margins,
smothered by self-congratulating smoke.
The words didn’t walk,
they staggered, tripped,
drunk on their own importance,
dragging me through the sludge.
A recommendation, they swore,
hiding somewhere beneath
this mountain of marble
chiseled by pretenders.
I looked for the pulse,
for something alive,
but the heart had stopped,
drowned in its own vomit.
They asked for opinions,
but all I saw—
a grave they carved
with pens full of poison.