MIND GAMES

the thing is
they liked to play games,
I’m not talking
parcheesi, scrabble, or dominos,
but rather tedious
mind games,
drama, frivolous flirting,
awkward sexual innuendo,
mindless competition,
dim-witted conversation,
accomplishing nothing,
less than nothing,
no goal or purpose
just something to suffocate
the dread of annihilation
with senseless motion
and irrational emotion,
it was something usually instigated
by women, and men too,
little dull plays without a script,
without talent or intelligence
and now many decades removed
I am relieved I no longer
know the players
as I sit here well into the
last stretch of life,
I have accepted
with clarity and surrender
soon there will be
a real script of empty pages
and the final intermix
of blind dissolution
while I stare
at the wall opposite
where shadows
mark time.