“Someone else’s thoughts about what you are,
Or should be, can drive you to acts of madness,”
Hilton Als wrote recently. Your own thoughts,
Said I, or something rather like me or inside
Of me, about who you should or might yet be,
Can do the same as easily. I watched a man
Perform his own small act of madness
This evening as I sat by the Christmas Tree,
Meditating on the snow beginning to accumulate
Outside of the window in front of me, me,
Still here after my own acts of madness,
Having failed at almost everything, even to decrease
The surplus population. This man emerged,
Shirtless and potbellied, from his door
Across the street, and walked into the snow.
I sat there, eyeing him through the ornaments
As he stood out there, half bare, snowy,
Not really eyeing anything. I wondered what
He thought he was doing, what scene played
In his head as he surveyed the evening street.
I had the feeling he was me, or as I should be,
Or still might be, oblivious idiot, coming out
To see a world for which he never prepared
And never needed to see. But that’s just me.
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