The Dark Matter Of Graduation Poem by Tony Walton

Dark Matter – noun – Nonluminous material in the universe
not seen by the naked eye.

Graduation day –

and later (with fake ID) that night:
A hotel room, booze, trilled song!

You raid the hotel room liquor bar!

Some years later

shuffling towards a cornered cubicle
drooped in your ergonomic chair with
caffeine to replace blood and computer to
displace brain, there under the slow tick of
the clock metering a motionless march.

A jet lag

hotel rooms of icy paintings staring over

nothing,

delving days with stormy eyes
searching
a sea of fleshy faces and plastic convention
name tags of lives mapped and wrapped,
stomachs filled with free shrimp,
clutching drink tokens (“Good for One Drink! ”)

soon they are slumped on the bar – pale and
pot bellied, like cadavers dissected in medical school.

You retreat to the 12th floor and remember
your hero, Siddhartha Buddha, who it
has been said -during his brief ascetic phase,

working in a pottery production shop, walked off
the job one day - ”Thank God I’m outta that place, ”
he murmered and then smiled - to no one in particular.

You raid the hotel room liquor bar, then

lay back on hard springs and
await the unshaven jaws of dawn.