The Party
My friends, your faces don’t fit your words.
You are all ashen, askew, off-balance to what I remember.
I am alone in a crowded room.
The news of departures strikes me dead.

An hour-long groan twists right below my throat
(A spiny delicacy I apparently didn’t chew thoroughly enough).
There’s to be a changing of the guard in half a month,
Or so I’m told.
Tall, in a Sunday bride white, he delivers a shock
An awe, a horror of which I was unaware.
The time given was not time enough.

The fire burns behind me;
I fumble through the voices
(19 different names yet mostly all the same).
It makes me ill to be counted among them.
Is it conceit, Narcissus reborn, or is it quite the inverse?
I could never really deduce the answer, not after our first meeting.
Parties never sit well with me.

“I’m sorry sir, closing time is 11 PM.”
I walk to the car, swearing at the telephone.
A long drive is needed, ‘til dawn consumes my trembling,
‘Til I have forgotten my displeasure.
How long is it from here to the border?
I should really ask her, but it’s late.
Again, “closing time is 11.”
I am unfit for these trivial trials and these complications.

“Honey, I’m home!” But wait, the house is empty.
It always is. The bee-sting strings mock me.
I’ve not been able to get them to behave properly
For weeks now. It’s quite torturous.
It just hurts my fingers and my ears to be lampooned in such a way.
Again, that undigested twisting right below my throat.
I wish she was here. She might have grey-haired answers
Mixed with her fictitious attempts at comfort.

My friends, your faces don’t fit your words.
You are all ashen, askew, off-balance to what I remember.
I am alone in a crowded room.
The news of departures strikes me dead.