One Knee Down in the Common Room

today i wrote an

artist, joe, don't be

so sad, you expect

too much, from others

you blame - yeats whined,

of course it does

not hold - we are flawed.

at this point i know not

who i address, joe,

i should have said...

make us something people

born tomorrow can

quote, i wrote to

him, and not myself

and all he needed

was a cry, not

words

these young people are strange

one is watching a video game

summary, lap-top blaring

in the common room,

a young black american

who spends the night doing this -

one presumes - in the common room,

a mindless bloke in the summary

enthusiastically describes the game's

finer points

a Slovenian guy from a

small city is doing something

on his phone

yesterday he filmed two

stimulated strippers

dancing

on a späti counter: he could not

believe his eyes and recalls the

event over and again

while his attractive girlfriend takes

it in sride: he is young, and

resolved: an american dreamer,

stoic, accepting

hardened. Yet

and it is harder to write about this

afore the mindless ondulation of persons on a nightshop counter

the lot of them posed

for a picture

and they were happy... an oasis amidst

the folly,

a condition strange, from all the way

out here