Casual Observer


Unable to cope with the demands
                                    of daily subsistence,
                                        and the insistent hokum
                                                                 of the modern world,
I return, pitiful,
                       to myself once more,
                       to my own little niche
                                               on the bleak margins of things,
             a casual observer
                          of the happenings of life,
                                                         drinking in the illusory promises
                                                                               of warmth and comfort,
                                                         knitting a better brand of reality
                                                                                 out of lies and daydreams,
                                                         embracing the death that is
                                                                                                 anonymity,
                                                          making love to the cold hand
                                                                                              of loneliness
                                                                      without a stop,
                                                                                  or a fetter.
                                                                                   Not a fetter.
This is who I am.
This is where I belong.
This is where I am accepted,

                at least, by demons.


May 1996