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celestecat
Junior Member

since 2004-02-02

Posts 29

0 posted 2004-02-09 08:16 PM

After a few days
every face seems familiar
a desparate similarity in each
which confuses me
and yet seems comforting.

This place
suits me
I sometimes think;
interior unchanging, trapped in an
unknown era.
Whole judgements made on
job, ambition and figure.
Everyone seems to know each other
and within days I am absorbed in
the tidal waves
of years of familiarity.

People fear
the small things
here.
The death that occurs
for reasons unknown
the increase in theft
and general crime;
cower in terror at
the thought of walking
the back streets and alleys
but I am not afraid
of any of this
at all.

They read the paper
and are sickened at the state
of the world
and the people living
in it
but I know it doesn't touch them.
Their own world is so neat
and miniture.

It tears at me
because I know now
that familiarity does breed contempt;
that also any minor difference
in appearance, race, accent of voice
can permanently
cast you asunder.

Sometimes it seems
that whole populations of some
small towns
are made up by people
who can not escape;
became trapped under the falling bricks
of responsibility
the gift and burden
of family life;
always to retreat to
wearing shift work
and nine to five jobs
seem somehow destined
for late retirement
and permanent
mid-life crisis.

Their eyes both smile and plead
frown and plead.
But I am left unsure of how to help them
sometimes I think, in places like these
the lonliest place to be
is surrounded by dozens of people.
While their situations
and bitterness can be
so similar
they are trapped in seeming unrecognition
of matching problems
and
identical sets of
relationship crises.
But of course
there's more to it then that.

To see familiarity in anything but a face here
would be to admit defeat
people reflect in others dissatisfaction
and fain confidence in the dissolution of others
while somehow constructing a fearful prophercy
made also
for themselves.

Nightshade