and so here we are again
in the same place we were before
talking about nothing different –
pretending everything is ok
when it clearly isn’t – and why
should it matter anyway because,
even if it were, we wouldn’t
work on anything important –
always skirting the issue
acting as if nothing is going on –
living a massive, disastrous lie
We haven’t been talking
Sending a glance now and then
Truth is, we got sick of each other
Sometimes we’ll have a moment
A tiny bit of less hostility
No follow up either
It just lies there in mystery
Hazy with undefined edges
Smouldering
Talking about sultriness of weather casually
And exchanging a few worried glances
Over yesterday’s stale news
Over a cup of tea, words were expressed between you and me
in a whimpering tone
To articulate the everyday violences of life
How when evening descends
Angst is perfectly brushed aside by parroted words of routinised life
What do you want to eat for dinner?
The wife asks to the man of the house
In a whirlpool of raging questions, small talk comes to the rescue to
Extinguish the political self of an individual
How one feels at home living under one uniform voice
Propaganda of small talk is immense, as immense as pure despair
whose threat is throttled every night in the name of sanitised life.
We speak now only in italics
Passing each other throughout
the day a hundred times
The familiarity, the recognition in habit lies
there underneath as it echoes back to us
Our false tender mercies and shared memories
Not so clever distortions
Uncommon grounds
One of these days you will not
come home
And the cycle will begin anew
More at https://www.taralynnhawk.com/.
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Tara’s second book of poems, “Rhetorical Wanderlust” coming at the end of November. Her first, “The Dead”, is available on Smashwords.