and may present them, if itemized,
before the Board of Directors. I know

that part of being human
is deferring to the experts.

If I was not supervised by a parental
bureaucracy, you would lose me

to the opium dens.
For I have heard that the philosophy

of the East is a more peaceful one.
Yet in the West it’s said, if our lives

were meant to be peaceful, why did the Lord
give us fingernails to chew on?

With our teeth, humans are not allowed
to resolve any conflict besides

the intra-personal ones,
and I’m thankful for it. My conflicts

with myself keep me from flying
in the face of strangers in the street,

unlike the man in Kafka’s story, who would
snatch a woman’s handbag on the crowded train,

rather than go home to his wife’s face,
to which he was indifferent.