Poem: "A Good Objective of Leadership"
This poem came out of the March 2024 Crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by prompts from Dreamwidth users Wispfox, zianuray, and Fuzzyred. It has been sponsored by a pool with Fuzzyred. This poem belongs to the Shiv thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.
"A Good Objective of Leadership"
[Friday, October 30, 2015]
It was the day before Halloween,
and Cook had put Shiv in charge
of baking and decorating cookies.
Cook had put Shiv in charge.
That was as crazy as it could get.
"Shiv, relax. They're just cookies,"
said Cook. "Worst case scenario,
if you set 'em all on fire somehow,
we just buy some from a bakery."
"Will anyone have enough to sell?"
Shiv said, fidgeting. "It's Halloween."
"That's tomorrow, we're working
a day early for a reason," said Cook.
"Yeah, somebody will have cookies
that we can buy in bulk to serve."
"Okay," Shiv said. "That's
a backup plan. Okay. I can
do this." He rubbed his hands
on his pants. "I can do this."
"Of course you can," Cook said,
patting his back. "I got faith in you."
"Well, that makes one of us,"
Shiv muttered, turning to work.
Fortunately, much of the work
had already been done for him.
Cook had chosen the recipes
for cutouts: plain sugar cookie,
chocolate, and gingerbread.
Royal icing, okay, Shiv knew
how to handle that thanks
to Pain's Gray who was
a genius in the kitchen.
A more experienced cook
had written out a schedule
that showed how long it'd
take to make, cool, and
then decorate each batch
so that all the steps wove
together without dead time.
There were a few firebreaks
so one delay wouldn't crash
the whole schedule, though.
All Shiv had to do was
supervise the team of
kitchen workers assigned
to him, and help out with
preparation and decoration.
"A good objective of leadership is
to help those who are doing poorly
to do well and to help those who
are doing well to do even better,"
Cook said. "You need to develop
more boss skills, and Liberty here
wants to learn more about cooking."
Shiv looked at the little huddle of
people he'd been given for the day,
all watching him with wide eyes.
"Okay," he said, glancing over
the group to see who he had.
Quickly Shiv sorted out
his dishwashers and set
them at the three-part sink.
Then he looked over the rest
of the crew that he had today.
Bing Levison was a tall black man
who could bake well, though he
wasn't much at decoration.
"All right, Bing, I want you
to handle the baking team,"
said Shiv. "Here are a couple
of assistants to help you out.
You've got those stations over
there." He pointed to them.
Now he just needed to find
someone else who was decent
at the decorating end of things.
Chita Castilla was mixed-race
leaning Hispanic, and like Shiv
she enjoyed carrying a sketchbook
around to draw whatever she saw.
She also had a knack for making
food look like the picture on the box.
"Hey Chita, do you think you could
copy stuff like this?" Shiv asked,
showing her the cookie pictures.
"Yeah, some of these are just
simple lines, and this looks like
it's done in a wash of edible paint,"
Chita said, leaning over to look.
"That's it exactly," said Shiv.
"Okay, you're heading up
the team for decoration,
and you get the last couple
of assistants we have left."
"What about me?" Liberty said.
She looked a little bit lost.
"You're with me," said Shiv.
"I'll go over the baking with you,
then show you how to work with
royal icing. It's not too hard."
"All right," said Liberty. "I
like how your stuff turns out."
"Okay, everyone, here are
the schedules and the recipes,"
said Shiv. "We're all going to start
with the baking and the prep work,
like making and tinting the icing.
Once some of the cookies have
cooled, we'll start decorating."
At least the fondant came in
big tubs and didn't need made.
"The first batches will be things
that need background icing, so
we're gonna make a bunch of
squares and sugar-cookie men
in different flavors," said Shiv.
"That way it can be drying while
we make the ones that have
a plain cookie background."
He helped carry ingredients
to get all the stations set up.
"Now I just have to keep an eye
on everything to make sure nobody
goes off the track," Shiv sighed.
"Better you than me," said Liberty.
"I'd hate to be in charge of all this."
"Well, boss wants me to learn
how to delegate," Shiv grumbled.
Everyone worked together
to get the first batches of
cookies into the ovens.
"While that's baking, we
can start on the fondant,"
Shiv said, opening a tub.
The stuff didn't taste great,
but worked like modeling clay
and it was technically edible,
plus it took impressions well.
They rolled out slabs of the stuff
to use with the most intricate of
the anatomical cookie cutters.
There were skulls, hands, pelvises,
feet, and whole bodies that looked
like drawings from a textbook.
You just cut out the shapes,
then brushed a wash over them
to make the lines pop more. If
Shiv had enough time to get fancy,
then he could add more details
with a brush or pen and edible ink.
The fondant was on parchment,
so it would just slide onto the cake
or giant cookie as a solid decoration.
Shiv looked forward to seeing how
the coffin cakes would turn out.
The idea with those was to take
a sheet cake and cut it in rectangles,
trim off the corners of each one to form
the coffin shape, and then place one
of the whole skeleton fondants or
dancing skeleton sets on top.
The corner trimmings could be
used to make dirt cups, which
were always popular with the kids.
By the time the first of the cookies
were out of the oven onto cooling racks,
Shiv was ready to make royal icing.
"This recipe uses meringue powder,
so you don't gotta separate eggs
or worry about them being raw,"
said Shiv. "It's just that, water,
and powdered sugar. Well, plus
whatever color or flavor you want
to add. I usually use vanilla for
white, anise or licorice for black."
"Are you making different batches?"
Liberty said. "Not just the colors?"
"Yeah, you need two kinds of
royal icing," said Shiv. "This one
is thick for making lines that stay
where you put them. That one is
thinner, for flooding large areas.
It gets thicker as you whip it, and
if it's too thick, use water to thin it."
"Here, the first batch is cool, so
you can start icing," said Bing.
They were square sugar cookies.
Shiv laid them out in a grid on
a sheet pan for easy handling.
"Okay, first I use black liner icing
to go around the edge," Shiv said
as he demonstrated. "Put the tray
between us and you can come along
behind me to fill them with flood icing."
They did one tray that way, then
switched roles so that Liberty
could try doing the outlines.
"What if I fuck it up?"
Liberty said, fidgeting.
Shiv shrugged. "They're
cookies. Eat the evidence."
Liberty giggled. "Okay,
I can do that," she said,
the tension broken.
Of course it took her
a few attempts to get
the hang of the pastry bag
and produce straight-ish lines,
but what were a few cookies
out of all they were making?
Soon they finished that batch
of squares and moved on to
the more complicated men.
You had to be careful going
around the heads, arms, and
legs -- and curves were harder
to draw evenly than straight lines.
Liberty was starting to make
upset noises, and her hands
were strangling the bag.
"Take it easy. Breathe,"
Shiv reminded her. "If you
tense up, then you squeeze
too hard and it squiggles."
"Yeah, that keeps happening,"
she said. "It's driving me nuts!"
"Little wobbles you can fix
with a toothpick, but that
won't work if they're big,"
Shiv said, demonstrating.
"Then you have to scrape
off the icing and try again."
They got through the set
just in time for the first of
the plain cookies to arrive.
There were both chocolate
and plain gingerbread men,
on which Shiv drew skeletons
with white liner royal icing.
Then came the trays of
"loose" skeletons with
tiny, individual pieces
cut from dough scraps.
They needed bones
drawn on in white.
The cool thing about
these was that you
could pose the bones
on the cake however
you wanted it to look,
like they were running
or dancing or whatever.
"Just watch me for now,"
Shiv said to Liberty, who
was starting to look anxious
again. "You can try drawing
bones on the black-iced ones
later, they're pretty simple."
"Yeah, maybe," said Liberty.
"You make this look so easy,
but it's not. It's really not."
"Well, I've been doing this for ...
gosh, almost two years now,"
Shiv said. "Huh. Time flies."
The finished cookies were
racked on their trays to dry
before they could be moved
into packages and stored.
By then, the first of the cookies
with iced backgrounds had dried
enough for more decorations.
"Chita, can you start drawing
some of the skeletons on
people shapes?" said Shiv.
"Sure, those look fun,"
Chita agreed, and took
a tray of them to decorate.
"Watch me," Shiv told Liberty.
"You draw knobby-ended bones
like this. Squeeze, pull, squeeze.
You can push the point of the bag
a bit to fork the end of the bone."
He drew the hands that way,
then moved on to ribcages.
"The ribs are basically like
checkmarks curved together,"
Shiv explained as he worked.
"The heart's done in red and
it's just a V shape. You might
need to tweak it with a toothpick."
He showed Liberty how that worked,
because a toothpick was perfect
for nudging royal icing into place.
Then he plopped down a tray of
men in front of Liberty's station.
"You don't have to make 'em
as fancy as what I did earlier,"
he assured her. "The skull is
an oval with dents above the jaw."
"Okay," Liberty said dubiously
as she watched him demonstrate.
"Make a line for the spine, and
then cross it with the ribs. Draw
one knobby bone for each of
the arms and legs," Shiv said.
"Done -- you draw the faces later."
It took a good bit before Liberty
could really draw with the icing,
but she figured it out eventually.
Meanwhile Shiv and Chita
racked up their own cookies.
By the time they finished
those batches, some of
the earlier ones were
ready to have the details
drawn on with edible ink.
Shiv showed Liberty
how to draw with them.
"It's a lot like regular pen,
but you have to be careful
not to push too hard or else
it'll break through the icing,"
said Shiv. "That's dry, but
not all the way hard yet,
so you can't lean on it."
As she watched, he
sketched cheekbones
and teeth on the skulls.
"You wanna help me
with the loose ones next?"
Shiv asked, looking at Liberty.
"I can do the faces if you do
the pelvises. That's just
a couple hearts, like this."
He knew the holes weren't
really shaped like hearts,
but it looked cute on cookies.
Liberty handled the edible pen
just fine, and in fact she worked
faster than Shiv did. After all,
he had to draw two eyes, nostrils,
and a mouth full of tiny teeth.
When it came time to put
faces on her own skeletons,
though, Liberty balked.
"I can't draw actual faces,"
she protested. "I can barely
manage to draw the hearts!"
"Just give it a try," said Shiv.
"It's only two big dots for eyes,
one for the nose, and maybe
two or three for teeth. See?
The only hard part is adding
a bit more definition to the jaw."
"Well then you do that part,"
Liberty said. "I guess I can
try the eyes and stuff."
She actually did fine;
she'd had plenty of
practice already today.
"I'm done," Chita declared,
stretching. "What's up next?"
"That's the last batch,"
Bing said. "We're done."
"Good, I'm fuckin' starved,"
Liberty said. "The food smells
have been making me hungry."
"Yeah, my belly's gnawing
on my backbone," Shiv said.
"Dip you up some pumpkin stew
if you want," said Cook. "You
folks worked plenty hard today,
and it's past your lunch time."
"Ah, I suck at this," said Liberty.
"Shiv and Chita both work
better and faster than me."
"Of course we do, we've
done it longer," said Chita.
"You're just learning."
"You did a great job
today," said Shiv. "You
got good at straight lines,
then curves. You can flood.
You can draw simple shapes
with royal icing or edible pen.
That's quite a lot, Liberty. You
should be proud of yourself."
"Really?" she said, looking
at him for reassurance.
"Yes, really," Shiv said.
"Now quit lollygagging
and get your stew, 'cause
I'm about to starve too."
The rule was, you
made sure your crew
got their food first, unless
using superpowers meant
you needed to go earlier.
Shiv urged his workers into
a line. "You made great cookies
today, Bing," he said. "Chita,
nice work on decorations."
He even made a point of
thanking the dishwashers,
who had managed to keep up
with the flow so that nobody
ran out of utensils or bakeware.
"Hey Cook, set aside a couple tubs
of cookies for me once they're dry,"
said Shiv. "I want one for the Finns
and another to tip the teleporter."
"Can do," Cook said as he
served up their lunches.
Shiv just felt grateful to grab
a bowl of pumpkin stew and
a hunk of fresh-baked bread,
then retreat to a booth to eat.
The food was good and hot,
and went a long way toward
helping him settle down again.
It had been challenging to do
his own work while keeping an eye
on everyone else's work as well.
It hadn't been a disaster, though,
so Shiv felt grateful for that.
"Nice work today," Cook said
as he sidled up to Shiv's booth.
"I think you did just fine handling
the good objective of leadership."
Then he put down a piece of
chocolate coffin cake topped
with a dancing skeleton.
Success tasted so sweet.
* * *
Notes:
This poem is long, so its character and content notes appear separately.
"A Good Objective of Leadership"
[Friday, October 30, 2015]
It was the day before Halloween,
and Cook had put Shiv in charge
of baking and decorating cookies.
Cook had put Shiv in charge.
That was as crazy as it could get.
"Shiv, relax. They're just cookies,"
said Cook. "Worst case scenario,
if you set 'em all on fire somehow,
we just buy some from a bakery."
"Will anyone have enough to sell?"
Shiv said, fidgeting. "It's Halloween."
"That's tomorrow, we're working
a day early for a reason," said Cook.
"Yeah, somebody will have cookies
that we can buy in bulk to serve."
"Okay," Shiv said. "That's
a backup plan. Okay. I can
do this." He rubbed his hands
on his pants. "I can do this."
"Of course you can," Cook said,
patting his back. "I got faith in you."
"Well, that makes one of us,"
Shiv muttered, turning to work.
Fortunately, much of the work
had already been done for him.
Cook had chosen the recipes
for cutouts: plain sugar cookie,
chocolate, and gingerbread.
Royal icing, okay, Shiv knew
how to handle that thanks
to Pain's Gray who was
a genius in the kitchen.
A more experienced cook
had written out a schedule
that showed how long it'd
take to make, cool, and
then decorate each batch
so that all the steps wove
together without dead time.
There were a few firebreaks
so one delay wouldn't crash
the whole schedule, though.
All Shiv had to do was
supervise the team of
kitchen workers assigned
to him, and help out with
preparation and decoration.
"A good objective of leadership is
to help those who are doing poorly
to do well and to help those who
are doing well to do even better,"
Cook said. "You need to develop
more boss skills, and Liberty here
wants to learn more about cooking."
Shiv looked at the little huddle of
people he'd been given for the day,
all watching him with wide eyes.
"Okay," he said, glancing over
the group to see who he had.
Quickly Shiv sorted out
his dishwashers and set
them at the three-part sink.
Then he looked over the rest
of the crew that he had today.
Bing Levison was a tall black man
who could bake well, though he
wasn't much at decoration.
"All right, Bing, I want you
to handle the baking team,"
said Shiv. "Here are a couple
of assistants to help you out.
You've got those stations over
there." He pointed to them.
Now he just needed to find
someone else who was decent
at the decorating end of things.
Chita Castilla was mixed-race
leaning Hispanic, and like Shiv
she enjoyed carrying a sketchbook
around to draw whatever she saw.
She also had a knack for making
food look like the picture on the box.
"Hey Chita, do you think you could
copy stuff like this?" Shiv asked,
showing her the cookie pictures.
"Yeah, some of these are just
simple lines, and this looks like
it's done in a wash of edible paint,"
Chita said, leaning over to look.
"That's it exactly," said Shiv.
"Okay, you're heading up
the team for decoration,
and you get the last couple
of assistants we have left."
"What about me?" Liberty said.
She looked a little bit lost.
"You're with me," said Shiv.
"I'll go over the baking with you,
then show you how to work with
royal icing. It's not too hard."
"All right," said Liberty. "I
like how your stuff turns out."
"Okay, everyone, here are
the schedules and the recipes,"
said Shiv. "We're all going to start
with the baking and the prep work,
like making and tinting the icing.
Once some of the cookies have
cooled, we'll start decorating."
At least the fondant came in
big tubs and didn't need made.
"The first batches will be things
that need background icing, so
we're gonna make a bunch of
squares and sugar-cookie men
in different flavors," said Shiv.
"That way it can be drying while
we make the ones that have
a plain cookie background."
He helped carry ingredients
to get all the stations set up.
"Now I just have to keep an eye
on everything to make sure nobody
goes off the track," Shiv sighed.
"Better you than me," said Liberty.
"I'd hate to be in charge of all this."
"Well, boss wants me to learn
how to delegate," Shiv grumbled.
Everyone worked together
to get the first batches of
cookies into the ovens.
"While that's baking, we
can start on the fondant,"
Shiv said, opening a tub.
The stuff didn't taste great,
but worked like modeling clay
and it was technically edible,
plus it took impressions well.
They rolled out slabs of the stuff
to use with the most intricate of
the anatomical cookie cutters.
There were skulls, hands, pelvises,
feet, and whole bodies that looked
like drawings from a textbook.
You just cut out the shapes,
then brushed a wash over them
to make the lines pop more. If
Shiv had enough time to get fancy,
then he could add more details
with a brush or pen and edible ink.
The fondant was on parchment,
so it would just slide onto the cake
or giant cookie as a solid decoration.
Shiv looked forward to seeing how
the coffin cakes would turn out.
The idea with those was to take
a sheet cake and cut it in rectangles,
trim off the corners of each one to form
the coffin shape, and then place one
of the whole skeleton fondants or
dancing skeleton sets on top.
The corner trimmings could be
used to make dirt cups, which
were always popular with the kids.
By the time the first of the cookies
were out of the oven onto cooling racks,
Shiv was ready to make royal icing.
"This recipe uses meringue powder,
so you don't gotta separate eggs
or worry about them being raw,"
said Shiv. "It's just that, water,
and powdered sugar. Well, plus
whatever color or flavor you want
to add. I usually use vanilla for
white, anise or licorice for black."
"Are you making different batches?"
Liberty said. "Not just the colors?"
"Yeah, you need two kinds of
royal icing," said Shiv. "This one
is thick for making lines that stay
where you put them. That one is
thinner, for flooding large areas.
It gets thicker as you whip it, and
if it's too thick, use water to thin it."
"Here, the first batch is cool, so
you can start icing," said Bing.
They were square sugar cookies.
Shiv laid them out in a grid on
a sheet pan for easy handling.
"Okay, first I use black liner icing
to go around the edge," Shiv said
as he demonstrated. "Put the tray
between us and you can come along
behind me to fill them with flood icing."
They did one tray that way, then
switched roles so that Liberty
could try doing the outlines.
"What if I fuck it up?"
Liberty said, fidgeting.
Shiv shrugged. "They're
cookies. Eat the evidence."
Liberty giggled. "Okay,
I can do that," she said,
the tension broken.
Of course it took her
a few attempts to get
the hang of the pastry bag
and produce straight-ish lines,
but what were a few cookies
out of all they were making?
Soon they finished that batch
of squares and moved on to
the more complicated men.
You had to be careful going
around the heads, arms, and
legs -- and curves were harder
to draw evenly than straight lines.
Liberty was starting to make
upset noises, and her hands
were strangling the bag.
"Take it easy. Breathe,"
Shiv reminded her. "If you
tense up, then you squeeze
too hard and it squiggles."
"Yeah, that keeps happening,"
she said. "It's driving me nuts!"
"Little wobbles you can fix
with a toothpick, but that
won't work if they're big,"
Shiv said, demonstrating.
"Then you have to scrape
off the icing and try again."
They got through the set
just in time for the first of
the plain cookies to arrive.
There were both chocolate
and plain gingerbread men,
on which Shiv drew skeletons
with white liner royal icing.
Then came the trays of
"loose" skeletons with
tiny, individual pieces
cut from dough scraps.
They needed bones
drawn on in white.
The cool thing about
these was that you
could pose the bones
on the cake however
you wanted it to look,
like they were running
or dancing or whatever.
"Just watch me for now,"
Shiv said to Liberty, who
was starting to look anxious
again. "You can try drawing
bones on the black-iced ones
later, they're pretty simple."
"Yeah, maybe," said Liberty.
"You make this look so easy,
but it's not. It's really not."
"Well, I've been doing this for ...
gosh, almost two years now,"
Shiv said. "Huh. Time flies."
The finished cookies were
racked on their trays to dry
before they could be moved
into packages and stored.
By then, the first of the cookies
with iced backgrounds had dried
enough for more decorations.
"Chita, can you start drawing
some of the skeletons on
people shapes?" said Shiv.
"Sure, those look fun,"
Chita agreed, and took
a tray of them to decorate.
"Watch me," Shiv told Liberty.
"You draw knobby-ended bones
like this. Squeeze, pull, squeeze.
You can push the point of the bag
a bit to fork the end of the bone."
He drew the hands that way,
then moved on to ribcages.
"The ribs are basically like
checkmarks curved together,"
Shiv explained as he worked.
"The heart's done in red and
it's just a V shape. You might
need to tweak it with a toothpick."
He showed Liberty how that worked,
because a toothpick was perfect
for nudging royal icing into place.
Then he plopped down a tray of
men in front of Liberty's station.
"You don't have to make 'em
as fancy as what I did earlier,"
he assured her. "The skull is
an oval with dents above the jaw."
"Okay," Liberty said dubiously
as she watched him demonstrate.
"Make a line for the spine, and
then cross it with the ribs. Draw
one knobby bone for each of
the arms and legs," Shiv said.
"Done -- you draw the faces later."
It took a good bit before Liberty
could really draw with the icing,
but she figured it out eventually.
Meanwhile Shiv and Chita
racked up their own cookies.
By the time they finished
those batches, some of
the earlier ones were
ready to have the details
drawn on with edible ink.
Shiv showed Liberty
how to draw with them.
"It's a lot like regular pen,
but you have to be careful
not to push too hard or else
it'll break through the icing,"
said Shiv. "That's dry, but
not all the way hard yet,
so you can't lean on it."
As she watched, he
sketched cheekbones
and teeth on the skulls.
"You wanna help me
with the loose ones next?"
Shiv asked, looking at Liberty.
"I can do the faces if you do
the pelvises. That's just
a couple hearts, like this."
He knew the holes weren't
really shaped like hearts,
but it looked cute on cookies.
Liberty handled the edible pen
just fine, and in fact she worked
faster than Shiv did. After all,
he had to draw two eyes, nostrils,
and a mouth full of tiny teeth.
When it came time to put
faces on her own skeletons,
though, Liberty balked.
"I can't draw actual faces,"
she protested. "I can barely
manage to draw the hearts!"
"Just give it a try," said Shiv.
"It's only two big dots for eyes,
one for the nose, and maybe
two or three for teeth. See?
The only hard part is adding
a bit more definition to the jaw."
"Well then you do that part,"
Liberty said. "I guess I can
try the eyes and stuff."
She actually did fine;
she'd had plenty of
practice already today.
"I'm done," Chita declared,
stretching. "What's up next?"
"That's the last batch,"
Bing said. "We're done."
"Good, I'm fuckin' starved,"
Liberty said. "The food smells
have been making me hungry."
"Yeah, my belly's gnawing
on my backbone," Shiv said.
"Dip you up some pumpkin stew
if you want," said Cook. "You
folks worked plenty hard today,
and it's past your lunch time."
"Ah, I suck at this," said Liberty.
"Shiv and Chita both work
better and faster than me."
"Of course we do, we've
done it longer," said Chita.
"You're just learning."
"You did a great job
today," said Shiv. "You
got good at straight lines,
then curves. You can flood.
You can draw simple shapes
with royal icing or edible pen.
That's quite a lot, Liberty. You
should be proud of yourself."
"Really?" she said, looking
at him for reassurance.
"Yes, really," Shiv said.
"Now quit lollygagging
and get your stew, 'cause
I'm about to starve too."
The rule was, you
made sure your crew
got their food first, unless
using superpowers meant
you needed to go earlier.
Shiv urged his workers into
a line. "You made great cookies
today, Bing," he said. "Chita,
nice work on decorations."
He even made a point of
thanking the dishwashers,
who had managed to keep up
with the flow so that nobody
ran out of utensils or bakeware.
"Hey Cook, set aside a couple tubs
of cookies for me once they're dry,"
said Shiv. "I want one for the Finns
and another to tip the teleporter."
"Can do," Cook said as he
served up their lunches.
Shiv just felt grateful to grab
a bowl of pumpkin stew and
a hunk of fresh-baked bread,
then retreat to a booth to eat.
The food was good and hot,
and went a long way toward
helping him settle down again.
It had been challenging to do
his own work while keeping an eye
on everyone else's work as well.
It hadn't been a disaster, though,
so Shiv felt grateful for that.
"Nice work today," Cook said
as he sidled up to Shiv's booth.
"I think you did just fine handling
the good objective of leadership."
Then he put down a piece of
chocolate coffin cake topped
with a dancing skeleton.
Success tasted so sweet.
* * *
Notes:
This poem is long, so its character and content notes appear separately.