U

Underachiever 

There is despair everywhere,
in the restaurants
in the high streets
in the vacuum of consumerism
we pass through everyday,
haunted by whiteness
that blank slate of our waking lives
demanding, begging to be filled in 
with meaning
belonging
fellowship

---

Unusual People 
for S.C.

They mostly are found with beards and
     headphones,
refusing to be part of whatever
world they find themselves in, here, alone
in the thickets of library, out there
amongst the conversers, ever silent
and strangely content, their tongue underspent.

Occasionally, there are the woman-kind
who will talk, and how freely, to tellers,
searching for one that might understand,
to waiters, clerks, all manner of fellas
who are always polite with their unease,
half-smiling as she’s deep in old glories.

As I walk through their land, they nod to me
from the end of bar-tops, smile as I wait
for them to board the bus: such gallantry!
Perhaps if I ever sought to conflate
their two worlds, I wonder, would strange hand
take strange hand to stand where strangeness
​     disbands?