there was this one night where it was cold
I sat outside anyway, but back in the corner
watching the faces blurred by cigarette smoke
that hovered over coffee cups and card games
and hearing conversation buzz somewhere
between a fly and a swarm of hornets, but
hearing and not listening to the talk
that was part of the fuzziness and the blur
that covered the place like a blanket
under which the blurred faces and buzzed conversation
were pleasantly warm despite the night's cold
     I was the Observer in my corner watching
     old and broken and spying on all that I desired
     cursing my immature old age and it's accompanied body
     wishing for a moment that I might have back
     just a piece of my youth and acceptablity, one piece
     so that I could melt into that warm blur and buzz
     and hover over the coffee like the cigarette smoke
     playing a hand of cards and letting
     my own voice join the buzz
     that was the desire, yes to become part
     of what I was watching
but my youth and acceptability were gone
long before I reached the age of youth, while I,
still a child acquired an age that is older
than I am even now, in brutal exchange for my innocence
that collected my youth along with childhood
and know that I have always been the Observer watching
the youth that I never was a part of and still long for
as I fade into middle age and wonder when
the bitterness and jealousy will come to jade me finally
and make me a rude and ugly old man whose place,
obvious, is this corner from which I'm watching, shunned
so that I no longer have to shun myself
     I ponder why my watching of these things desired,
     this watching and not joining
     brings me a pleasure comforted
     when I watch a girl take a boy's hand,
     when I watch two friends share a moment
     when I watch the eager vindictiveness of a trump hand
     played in a game of Spades
     while I sit back here watching, solitary, but instead
     I join them through imagination, through fantasy
     I sit at their tables in my mind and drink coffe
     and play cards
     I hold hands and share moments
     I am a part of it all
     and so there is no jealousy from where I watch
     but, when the doors close and it is time to go home
     there is that one moment of intense lonliness
     as they go home together and I alone





© 2004 Wild Rabbits/Railway View Music and Publishing (Michael E. Warshaw) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Reprints by permission only: This work may not be reproduced in any form without the express permission of it's Author, Publisher, and Publication or Forum in which it appears.

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