He hangs out in bookstores, all dusty and dim,
or is it the bookstores that hang out in him?
He knows about life in a clinical way
from books he has read and the things people say.
The pants are too short and the face is too long.
The shirt and the bright purple vest are all wrong.
He hides behind glasses with tortoise shell frames
and lives with a cousin whose gold fish have names.
But he can think thoughts that no other can touch,
like Hawking, string theory, genomics and such.
He quotes from Will Shakespeare, and Cicero too
and knows Aristotle "much better than you".
He eats when he’s hungry and lives without time.
He hopes without rhythm and dreams without rhyme,
covertly, in cyberspace rooms where he knows
that he can be anyone, anything goes.
He’s read about life but he hasn’t yet been,
he promised his Mom but he backed out again--
and he’d shed a tear if he knew how to cry;
he’s dying to live while he’s waiting to die.
© Copyright 2004 W.D.Neighbors
Written, in draft at least, at the "Book Passages" bookstore in Corte Madera CA while I was waiting for my wife to finish her lunch. This is an ebellisment on an observation of a real person; a fantasy expansion (mostly in my mind) based on the subject's looks alone. I really like this poem (is it okay to like your own poem?).
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