Athens 1

The roads are long where i walk
The shadows deep in Athen's streets
The people pale
Wearing disenchantment upside-down
On awkward faces
That i see awkwardly.
My response, instinctive, streaming out of me?
It streams briefly, bitten off
Replaced with a peculiar angst.
It is in the inter-connections
Brief surges of hope, sombre rejections
That flicker from eye to eye
As hand gestures to hand.
Should i stop and talk
To the distributor of leaflets
Advertising half-price clothing sale?
She hands me it so neatly, so concisely
Prettily smiling.
Should i stop to ask
The young man on the street
To tell me his life-story?
Would it be short, prosaic, unadorned,
Or might it ebb and flow
With something like beauty?
May as well ask a question of a crowd.
Just as effective to be polite to a mob.
Than to tumble out clumsy words
At an individual.
Where are you racing to, fools?
Short-order march to there and back.
And i, unseen, amongst you.
"I am the secret cripple"
This is what i think to myself on city streets.
Clumsy automaton, tries to fit in
At the Automaton Convention. (no invite)
I am the Secret Cripple
Whose connections are all cut off
Whose loves by every step
Are disrupted.