One-Way Dialogue
The drab trappings
Of the city frame
The man soliloquizing
Quite nicely.
They add a layer of contrast
To his feverish self-debate
(Of which everyone else
Only hears one side),
But do little
In the way of convincing
The onlooker of his sanity.
It is surely strange
How something so powerful
In the performance arts,
When adeptly embroidered
Into the skin of a narrative,
Orated in the presence of
A paying audience,
Still smacks of insanity
In the park,
Where a swing set
Or a jungle gym
Could be a spaceship
Or a city, a rope —
A vine to swing on.
A slide can
Become a mountain
Where the bandits
Hide with the hermits.
But as the parents
Watch their children play,
His external monologue
(and internal dialogue)
Go on, much
Like the show
Or life,
Or the passerby
Who gawks at but
A glimpse of
Soliloquy, taken
Out of context.
Were it not for
Graying stubble,
He might seem at home
Among those kids, whose only
Limit is imagination.
We all grow up eventually, right?
Ignorance can beget
Moral superiority
In awkward situations like these.
Many adults have but
A childlike understanding
Of some things,
Or a lack of awareness,
And thus arrive at
The intersection of comprehensible
And impossible,
Somewhere on the order of
Eleventy-forty-threeve.
It’s a negative affect,
If you will.
A psychologist would,
But you don’t have to.
We needn’t do anything;
Least of all,
Listen to the rambler
In the square
Of the sidewalk
In the park, downtown —
But his chest reverberates
With wan intensity
And confidence, the
Gritty pallor of blind faith,
Pockmarked by self-undoing
And self-righteous certainty —
The hallmark of vicissitude.
It’s such a challenge climbing
Over foregone delusions,
Which began
An internal spat
Over a spurt
Of inverted conclusions,
Spawned in the wake of
Cerebral contusions
That influence and taint
The way confusion
Paints fears.
All the more reason to
Keep your self-assurance close,
And love everyone
As you would love those
You know.
