His overconfident mouth
Flapping open and closed,
Unendingly spewing some
Clueless soundtrack
That means something
Only to him.
Eyes glazing over,
Heads nodding off to
The droning hum.
Nobody’s ever told him
To stop.
Run, jump, jubilant, free.
Hunker, flinch, frown, ossify.
Two outwardly normal men
Sit on a park bench.
One admires the birds in the sky
Playing a carefree game.
The other sees a small
Chance of heavy rain and
Intractable despondency.
Expending an inordinate,
Excruciating amount of
Effort, he was able to
Mistrust and vilify people
Whose sole trespass was to
Live compassionately,
Peacefully, harmoniously.
The gall of these
Interlopers, vying for
Turf, position,
Raze relations, raise a
Wall of concrete reinforced.
Clean up on the outside.
Some look forward,
Others retract.
Musing wistfully about
An eroding golden era,
The stark contrast
Between the idyllic
Charm of the past and
A present gone awry.
It wasn’t always this way,
He explains sorrowfully,
There was a time when
People knew their station,
And everything was
More orderly.
An aging revisionist,
Hanging on to dreams
Of a place that never
Existed except in
His sheltered mind,
Unaware, subjective.
You could feel the
Moment when she
Realized that what
She needed to be happy
Was not the approval of
Some outside person
But her own love.
Trying to make
Sense of it,
No answers forthcoming.
Another mind,
Impossible to decipher
Without help.
Silence,
Absence of
Understanding.
A fragile crust of civility and
Self-satisfaction.
Practiced posturing.
Faces contorting laboriously,
Success stories volleyed
Back and forth, each more
Ungracious than the last, an
Ostentatious display of nihility.
Settling into oversize furniture,
Numbing drinks in hand, a
Selective catalog of books by
Small spewing minds, an
Overweening intimation of depth.
A flurry of strained graciousness,
High-school like social disgraces.
Scratch the surface to reveal
Festering unease.
Sadness surrounds
The gatekeeper,
So many precious hours
Spent making things
More convoluted,
Blocked, obstructed,
Rather than helping,
Pathological need to
Control driving base lust
For petty power.
Things are more difficult
Around here,
Thanks to me,
That’s how I matter.
He lets me into
His existence,
But it’s not a place
I really want to visit,
Rather unsettling,
Full of jagged edges,
Hard, untended
Spots of insecurity
Covered with makeshift
Patches of ego.
I politely look around
Hoping to find something
Comforting, healthy.
I leave shortly
Thereafter with
No plans to return.
