To rest alone within leisurely time
A well wasted space of unhidden bidding
To take up the taste of weightless encumbrance
The hours tick by without lifting a hand.

The eons of thoughts which pass through this pencil
When sitting in crowded rooms filled with the wares
Of life’s inspiration in hot bodied persons
They see me, they don’t. Invisible I write.

I wonder if they are as curious as I am
To know this lone figure in a sea of companions
Appear to be wasting my time in hot coffee-
filled dreams of a writer in idling waste.

What of my poems, my stories, my scribbles
Are worthy of readership blessed by the critics
When sit here I sit and I write about nothing
For nothing can come of my time wasted hand.

My mind it keeps turning and churning out lead
From my Bic #2 of black and of purple
The people ignore me by diminishing plate-fulls
My cup runneth over, my coffee refilled.

Where was I? Oh yes, I am here wasting time
My ears filled with droning of foreign speech convos
The lead leads to dullness, the clock I hear ticking
Is life passing by through my time withered grasp.

But time has no meaning in this little cafe
Christmas cake scarfed back in March by my side
And perfumes of women that drown out the noises
Of plates hitting forks hitting dentures, my turn?

Not yet. I sit with my pencil and bang out a poem
The stares and the glances ignored by my will
The writer within me strains hard to the surface
But still I write nothing, time wasted, again.

@Linda G. Hill

March 2005