con men in poetry

it’s not that people
women or men or
people outside of those categories or
people who live in-between those categories
it’s not that we’re attracted to assholes
per se

it’s that people tend to be attracted to
confident people and
assholes tend to often feign confidence
so they mistake that for actual confidence
these people running around playing wise
while making up their cruelty as they go along

very few confident people are actually so
eighty-three percent of confident people
are either crazy or making it up or both
while the seventeen percent of confident people
who are actually confident
tend to downplay their assuredness
not out of humility
rather because they know
most confident people are crazy or lying or both
so they’d rather not be mistaken for
the vast majority of confident people
they’d rather just
get stuff done

I say this as a person
with a handful of well-developed talents
and another handful of readily obvious flaws
who would rather be a little bit lonely than
fake it and look like
either a madman or a jerk
well, I mean
I’d mind less looking like a madman than a jerk
but again that’s just me
I’m not a confidence man
I’m just not a conman

Last updated August 02, 2017