Six people are too many
people
and a public place the wrong
place
for what you're thinking--
stop this now.
Who do you think you are?
The duck à l'orange is
spectacular,
the flan the best in town.
But there among your friends
is the unspoken, as ever,
chatter and gaiety its
familiar song.
And there's your chronic
emptiness
spiraling upward in search of
words
you'll dare not say
without irony.
You should have stayed at
home.
It's part of the social
contract
to seem to be where your body
is,
and you've been elsewhere
like this,
for Christ's sake, countless
times;
behave, feign.
Certainly you believe a part
of decency
is to overlook, to let pass?
Praise the Caesar salad.
Praise Susan's
black dress, Paul's promotion
and raise.
Inexcusable, the slaughter in
this world.
Insufficient, the merely
decent man.