while conversing about nothing at the witching hour with my
class of bright-eyed believers in the night, i wondered at the simplicity with
which we complicate our lives and so decided, with conviction, to walk away
from the inexcusable situation.
it all started in a house, with a feud over hairspray and what is acceptable, respectively, by gender, orientation, so on… and tempers flared with the cigarettes being smoked on the porch.
it was a strange night, without honey moon or breath of wind. there was a chair in the overgrown yard that sat among the brambles and it whispered to the long-haired girls; it spoke of wishes not granted, treasures, waves that never reach the shore.
and the matches were on, streaming five minutes behind and the boys had their eyes glued to the screen, their lips to their bottles. they sat in hush, somewhere between awe and jealousy.
so we smiled and manifested the stars in our eyes, slim
jaws, frame and accidental flash, in a small wild (what we did with our lives!)
what bothered us was how the time passed.
and it passed and passed and played with my watch and we
didn’t leave until the police came or perhaps it was just a mistake, a loud
story, because we were all confused by then.
down hills and misconstrued, the night tightened its fingers
around the strange and we all felt it, though we kept it to ourselves; raised
eyebrows, soft smirks, everyone causes trouble sometimes.
and so what if you want to converse about nothing for hours,
so do it. so what if you stand in the
street lamp glow and talk of ratios and likelihoods and labyrinth like lanes,
so if that’s what you want to do.
but i hate this: composed complexities, indelible waiting,
knees bent alternatively with alternating calls. i have no patience for the wavering, a
hemming vacillation, pockets full of secrets.
and if you want to do nothing be sure you love nothing, because what is
this life, if not doing what you love?
