I see myself
once here and then there
as others see me.
As a person who
does things,
spends his time
this way or that,
not mysterious as I imagine but
puzzling and trapped by
slothful poisons.
Yes, yes,
those things and more as I
question quantity of life
versus quality,
the greed for more years
at the backward-reaching expense
of their meaning.

I have been looking at
human beings in a way
that is new to me.
All human beings,
not anyone I know but
arbitrary specimens of human
passing through
my museum of the present,
my showroom of future memory.

We are strange concatenations of matter
parading ourselves, exposed,
it is impossible to hide the
obviousness of what we are, yet
uncertainty lingers like the
disdain of a stranger.