Attention To Detail

Have you ever heard someone walk up to a clerk at a supermarket
and ask for a half gallon of "Napoleon" ice cream?
Napoleon?
You want a Mussolini and a Stalin with that three for five?
Why don’t you go to the deli counter and ask for some
"Ro-to-sory" chicken?
Then swing by Starbucks to get a cup of coffee with
french vanill ER
and splend ER
Do you want some sod ER with your pizz ER?
Not that the A or the ER really matters on soda,

Because if you asked for a Pepsi and they gave you
     Coke, you wouldn’t
even,
notice!
And you can’t remember which one
A Mento makes explode, can you?
Good thing that chemists don’t so easily forget what happens when you mix bleach,
with…
that other thing…

I had a boss once who was OCD,
counted everything over,
and over and over,
and over.

1…2…3…4…
1…1…
1…2…3…4…
4…3…2…1…
….
….
1…2…3…4…
BUT, he never…
got the numbers wrong.

I have been berated,
my opinions negated,
freedom of speech denied,
because of my astute observations,
that the menu advertises penne pasta,
and these underhanded,
two-faced, bait and switch snatchers,
give me…
RIGATONI!
Are people that blind, culinary speaking?
There is a great difference! Can you not,
taste it?
smell it?
feel it?
see…that one of the noodle tips..
is more…
POINTY!?

Call me compulsive,

Call me uptight,
that I won’t eat a hotdog, without a hot dog bun!
Maybe it wouldn’t matter if I was starving,
from the third world,
food would be food.
Maybe these minute differences don’t matter…
So then…
I guess it wouldn’t matter, on Wall Street
if we switched the 474, to a 744?
or a 693 to a 396?
Then again, maybe,
If people had known the difference,
between the Japanese bombers, and Japanese Americans,
really knew the difference,
The Manzanar relocation center in 1942, might not have happened.
Maybe if we watched the details,
Harvard professors who are also African Americans,
wouldn’t get carted off to jail,
just for trying to get back into their own homes.
And maybe if we paid real attention,
we might have known the difference,
between one Arab nation and another,
known our real enemies,
know that it’s not the Turban, that indicates ideology.
Maybe, if we knew the details,
we could differentiate between innocent and guilty,
maybe…
I don’t know for sure.
Maybe this new wave of OCD, compulsive people coming up in the world,
is nature’s own way of countering the mess we’ve made,
by not paying attention.
I don’t know if the world would truly be better if we paid attention to detail,
but I do know, what it looks like, when we don’t,
and it, is a mess.