• a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.
• a state or organization governed or managed as a bureaucracy.

  plural noun: bureaucracies
• the officials in a bureaucracy, considered as a group or hierarchy.

These definitions are not good. They are bad. So I turned to Twitter to ask you, our readers, for a better definition. And boy, did you deliver.

I couldn’t judge the contest (because I’m sick and couldn’t deal with any undue stress), so I turned to my Two for Tuesday cohost, senior editor Mark Krotov, to do the honors. Mark edited The Utopia of Rules and knows a thing or two about bureaucracy.

I’ll highlight a few of my favorite entries tomorrow, but in the meantime, here are the winners.

Runners up:

@melvillehouse rule by desks.

— Casmilus (@Casmilus) February 25, 2015

@melvillehouse Bureaucracy: Filling out forms in triplicate so can get half the results in double the time. — Carla (@Carla_Cloutier) February 25, 2015

@melvillehouse the annoying stuff surrounding the fun stuff. — Conner Habib (@ConnerHabib) February 25, 2015

AND YOUR WINNER: 

I reply to @melvillehouse‘s request for a definition of bureaucracy with a sonnet called “I Would Prefer Not To”: http://t.co/zng4VrBjEm

— Jacob PaperBacharach (@jakebackpack) February 25, 2015

Here’s the full entry:

Alex Shephard is the director of digital media for Melville House, and a former bookseller.