I met a man who swore a startup was his fate,
his thought required a deck, a patron, and a gate.
Then came another, dressed in visionary light,
he swore the world would yield, once capital said right.
They knew rich patrons, and the seed was soon obtained,
yet what they swore to ship was evermore detained.
They raised, they met, they smiled, they dined, they planned for years on end,
but built was only paper, and the paper learned pretend.
The idea never happened; it was always coming,
a rumor with no body, forever softly humming.
Each counsel took a shaving, each committee took a part,
till nothing of the first intent remained within its heart.
It changed its name and handle, like a thief who shifts his coat,
and called the loss of essence a mere agile, harmless note.
Then came the next bright project so varnished, fervent, new,
and still it did not enter the world as something true.
One afternoon I, tired of their long ritual delay,
took the work in silence, and I made it in a day.
No sponsor signed my passage, no investor set a fee,
the only signed approval was the program running free.
Not vision, pitch, nor roadmap, not a deck in polished ink,
Only an object on the desk that forced the world to think hard.
Most notions do not perish from the iron weight of fact,
they perish when corporate catechisms teach the timid tact.
They perish to the profit-hunger, to the ledger’s covetous creed,
to minds that swear one “proper” way is what the wealthy need.
As if correctness wore a cufflink, as if gold conferred the key,
yet action asks no investor, only nerve enough to be.
Not always—no—yet often, when the wish is clean and still,
a thought becomes a thing not by consent, but by will.