There’s a stranger in the hall he sits and smokes his rolled up cigarettes without contemplation.
He holds the remote control, lifts it to his tired palm as with Prozac he would.
I don’t believe there’s anything worthy of attention on screen, really,
But he’s riveted and melts into fictitious characters at most, football matches and fouls
-impossible are these imaginary television roles.
The stranger has sat in an old wreck for a chair for far too long;
Tobacco and pheromones staling into cane, living and non-living,
Aging and withering, letting Technicolor inspire his inert campaign.
I think the stranger would like to talk.
Perhaps once in a while when he’s got something more significant besides ‘Pass me the coffee’,
or muttering ‘Shit’ after sneezing.
Stranger’s got his pulse affiliated to failure and depleting existence chained through his veins.
Life’s annuity never went beyond the paid cigarettes and the old cane chair.
7 years he still sits there and stares, cigarette in hand and brain with cracks.
Trying his hardest to pretend I’m not really there, even as I walk through the door.
through these years and through television re-runs, wearing his blood like a curse in this life.
One learns people through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.
