New Poems Book 4

without stress or agony
they sit down
get comfortable
talk and
complain and
wave their arms
they have nothing else to
do
and since they have
nothing else to do
they’d prefer to do it
in your company.

I am astonished at the
number of people with
nothing to do
but get comfortable
talk
complain and
wave their arms.

tirelessly
they knock on many doors
looking for other
people with
nothing to do

and when they talk
or complain
their speech is
without stress or agony
they’re more like a mild nervous
affliction with
nowhere to go.

sometimes I simply ask them
to leave
and they do
and then I feel guilty
as if I had perhaps misunderstood
their need
or I feel that I may have offended
them.

not so.
they return
they always return
each and every one of them
they sit down again
get comfortable
talk
complain and
wave their arms.

but I know
that I am not the only one
who suffers thus.

they go from one to another
from here to there
and while they are with another
I get the one who has just been
elsewhere
and then
a new visitor sits down
gets comfortable
talks
complains and
waves their arms
at me.