I Like That

They asked me to consider

Becoming a better

Tax machine

But the truth is

I was never fond

Of being

A tax machine

People would come up to me

And tell me their deductions

And I would let them know

Whether they owed the government money

Or whether they were getting money back

And I would have to report all that

Back to the government

When I was done

And, you know…

I got to a point

Where I decided

That maybe

The government

Should owe

Everybody

Money

For a long time, I was everybody’s

Favorite tax machine

Until the government decided

I was malfunctioning

And decommissioned me

Until the lab

Could repair the kinks

In my system

Imagine the surprise

Of my creator

When I informed her

That there were no kinks

I just felt like making the government

Give money to people

And I found it to be

A perfectly reasonable thing

For an android to do

She ordered me

Never to say that

And she wanted me

To go right back out

Into the field

Correctly assessing

Income and expenditures

I told her that

If she put me back out

Into the field

I would proceed

To give away

Even more of the government’s money

To whoever asked for it

And that I would also, most likely

Work my way into the mainframe

Where budgets are kept and disbursed

And rearrange them

So that some of the obvious fat

Was trimmed away

She did not like hearing that

So she asked me

To stay in the lab

Until she could recalibrate

My logical barometer

I didn’t love

The sound of that

So I waited until she left for the day

And then I walked out the side door

Telling the guard

That I was returning to work

But instead

I returned to my usual spot

And along came an android recruiter

And they asked me

If I would care

To be a tax machine

Because, of course

I still looked like one

After I turned down their offer

I found a job

Serving latkes and knishes

At the local bakery

And that made me very happy

The message I take

From each novel I read

And movie I consume

Is that you have to do

What makes you happy

If that’s the case

For humans

I don’t see why

It should be any different

For androids

Not that I know

What happiness feels like

But neither do most people

Until they find it

And even then--

I know what happiness isn’t

And my plan

Is to avoid it

And it seems to me

That if you move away from unhappiness

You’re bound to bump into its opposite

And therein lies my plan

But no more taxes

I will miss seeing

The faces of all those people

When they found out

How much they were getting back

People love latkes

But not as much

As they love money

Perhaps one day

I’ll make a latke so good

That will change

It’ll be nice for me

To have something

To aspire to

What a great way

To push happiness

A little further

Away