william butler Yeats at a buss stop.

being the young man that I was
all the fears that I held
which were rattling, and implosive
stemmed from the root of the inevitable desire
to be brilliante
and to be not.
monica,
my love
who traveld to Argentina
after nights and days of clinched fists with me
died her hair

and hoppen on capricious little buss

said she couldn't bare the nicotine infested rooms
I practically dragged her too
she could not bare
the self soothing
enormity
of my dreams
of my
destructive ego.
and so as I am what I am
strutting streets lonesomely
it is winter
and I am drowned in snow
drowned in folly
drowned in overwhelming
melancholy
and on a street bench one day
waiting at the buss stop one day
was an old man
in a thick coat
staring at a book
half asleep
half awake
both of us
in the quite cold early evening
our silent, reverberating hollowness lurking
burst forth little bits of conversation
as if to ease
the obvious
loneliness around the holidays
he said to me: "son
you are not the first
nor are you to be the last
to blindly peruse brilliance,
sitting here on a bench
almost decaying and morphing
into it and its accumulated molds
childless and loveless
I know I am not brilliant
but I stand
to observe life
if I have something to add
I do
if I dont
I watch,
no need to desperately make
my presence known
I think maybe sometimes
brilliance is the ability
to sit back
feet sown to the ground
and take it all in"