Typecast

As I drift through the day,
there are roles that I play.
Do I play them by nature,
or directed, on stage?

Always reticent, shy,
except when in class,
today, wake to find
I've been typecast.

I ask myself, all shift,
would it help--
to know who wrote the script,
the world?  Or myself?

People and Things

People and things live apart in my mind.
Each have their place and appropriate time.
Those places and times, they always arrive,
but rarely accompanied as I desire.

When I'm reading or writing, the phone always rings.
Work pulls me from friends and pretextual games.
It seems, in the act of tracing a day,
I and the world move the opposite way.

Alone, I get lost learning little-known facts.
Oh! To know the euphoria-guilt of this act!
Our world has little use for a man
Who feels the canyon between "talk" and "chat".

Yet as I gaze up at the well-marbled sky,
I re-learn that God likes me...I don't know why.
So I wait for the quiet.  Then, I can find
the lyric release for this ill-fitting mind.