Posted in Rituals

Leisure Time

Posted on by tq1695

It must be a core competency :
along with colour, style, hygiene
and small business accounting,
hairdressers are required to master small talk.

Chat literacy demonstrated in
television programs,
social trends,
popular sport,
populist politics –
but not too much so.

A thin and invisible line to be walked.
Interest and knowledge evident 
but no offence, 
or don’t come back opinions.

She was new
urchin freckled
with snub nose
and tangerine hair.
She asked about me – and what I’d been doing
mechanical reply trials to reflexive reciprocal. 
What has she been up to?

“ Oh
a bit of this,
a bit of that,
a bit of the other, not enough of the other.”

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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.