-1-

Still nights, inside
some people drink to forget their troubles.
They dance the night away
because they don't know that that's only a figure of speech.
Sometimes I watch them
and hope they will succeed. I
drink, but it is only Coca-Cola, and
I do not forget my troubles. Instead I go
for a walk, because it is one of those
nights. Dark. The dew thick
on heavy grass. I stop at the bank of a small
stream. I can think only of how cold the air
is, and assume
this means success. I do not
attempt politely to brush aside my concerns as if they were
nothing when people stop to ask,
because people do not stop to ask.
They do not stop because they do not think
they are there: they
have danced the night away. When they wake up
it will be morning, and they will rejoice at their success. When
I wake up it will be night, and I will wonder why
no one else notices.


-2-

I went into the woods, because.
It had had to be a bad night
amd I wanted to be with someone who wasn't there.
She wasn't in the woods, either, but then, no one was,
and that was sort of the point.
I wanted to throw something at something else. The brutality
of one solid mass clashing with another, against its will, was
poetry to my way of thinking.
But I'm too much a pacifist. I would never
act in anger, and in a way, that was
the problem.

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