Memo to corporate pigs

Behind
At the heart
Of the 2nd best
Political writings
Intended for an inaugural prize
There are some subscriber
Benefits

Memo to the heads of debauchment
(An Australian office tragedy in three acts)

Misery does not love company. Still,
troglodytes unite in micro-managing
and glory-hogging their way up
the corporate pecker,
regardless of the bedrizzled
lackeys who ghostwrite
(ghostthink) gorgon's
auto-erotic raptures.
Glorification of self is the only get off,
self-promotion the only pick up.
Homo sapiens resembles
Cro-Magnon (make that fillet mignon).
Eat or be eaten, consume or be consumed
in the orgasmic race to the biggest corporate profile
for the most miniscule contribution.

Know not what you can do
for your franchise?
Ask what your franchise can do
to the luckless bustards
labouring under your corpulent wing.
No good deed goes unplagiarised;
no noteworthy scheme leaves
the department unharvested.
Lack the intellectual capital to spend
on an informed decision?
Set multiple minions to work
then cherry pick the outcomes,
signing off with your own trotter.
Honour no man, woman or deity.
Recreate life in your own porcine image.

Days fall into nights, all unheeded.
A workaholic's wet dream
is unmerited praise, for
the sweat of others and
dreams of institutional lessers.
Best practice is your Widdershins yardstick;
choose the direct opposite
of ethical counsel to
consolidate power and
congregate perversities of soul.
The whole is bereft of
the doughnut of choice.
When your life is your job,
the bureaucrat's lot,
you live to bleed others.
–Barry Gittins 

Ouyang Yu is an Australian poet, novelist, essayist, literary translator an essayist. His second novel,