Obsession

Photo: Big Frank Dickinson (Paris metro)

Obsession

"Obsession is like waiting for a train that never arrives."

~ Big Frank Dickinson

Obsession

Without a doubt the doubt is real.
He carried it in his back pocket and sat on it daily.
Hope deferred, undetermined disappointment – yet,
When troubled he would look away
To a place where his mind could engage
Even momentarily in some kind of distraction
Like when you run your hand over the back of
Your shoulder, more out of boredom than the search
For anything in particular and you discover some irregularity
In the surface of your skin that takes you away
From whatever it was that you had been obsessing on
The focus collapsing from the camera in the sky, zooming
In on that scab, or pimple, or whatever that your finger
has discovered. You can’t actually see it, like you saw ,
Your previous obsession in repeated views, but it takes you away.
As if there were an away; look away, look away, look away
Like a Dixie cup that holds your attention only while drinking,
Then dropped in the trash, now your wandering eye is off and running.
Followed closely behind by a parade of possibilities – each discarded
In turn, not so much because of any lack of intrinsic worth, just boring.
What is it that your mother used to say – life isn’t a bowl of cherries?
Well, even if it were they’d eventually get eaten, and then what?
So, he, … reached in his back pocket
Pulled it out, and ran his mind over its craggy truth
As your worried tongue does over a jagged cracked tooth.