THE POET AT A PARTY

Glasses of sparkling wine flickering in the party lights, their warm glow a charm to nervous hearts. Fear of ostracism provokes the casual frivolity typifying conversation as we exchange dream-like utterances. Cigarettes are passports to complicity, mais je ne fume pas.

Across the room lone wolves stalk their prey with apparent nonchalance. Some go in for the kill, others, evidently unimpressed by potential victims, sit aloof devising masks to conceal their frustration. Meanwhile music is clearly the protagonist of things. The initial exuberance having slowly subsided, everything now gravitates to the flood of sound drowning empty spaces. This is now our raison d'être, a transient justification for our continuing participation, a dispersion of this gathering's unpremeditated mishaps.