The waitress approaches my table asking if I would like dessert now. I midly order a piece of Hot Fudge Cake, the specialty of this sleepytown's Shoney's. As she turns to run off, I add that a refill of coffee would be nice. I try to smile, show a little general kindness for her services, but she isn't looking and it doesn't really come out right anyway. So much for compassion this evening. I look down at the poetic lines I have just finished, a little forced, somewhat cramped instead of the desired economical effect. I guess they aren't all that spectacular. Nonetheless, they do portray the view of humanity that I have tried for. I read them again to reassure myself of their estimed quality. "Not Bad," I say to myself, "although they could use a little polishing. I could trim the edges, clarify the body, just clean up. This might just work, you never know." Deep down, but maybe not that deep, I know that I will never be a writer. Yet my eighth grade teacher said I was "A Poet at Heart." That very well may be, but it doesn't mean I can write poetry. I can get the iambic thing down, but then it seems forced, the words don't bend to the format, even worse yet, the thoughts don't bend into words. I know what I mean to say; I know what I tried to say with the words I did use, but when I read it from the reader's point of view, nothing seems quite the same. I guess I will always be the only one to know what I mean, my mind tends to ramble that way. Or actually I should say this way.

The waitress, LaQuita, is on her way with my big piece of fudge cake. Evidently, she remembers my request for coffee because she is also bringing a tall pot for my table, although I am the only one drinking. That's fine, I should be here a while anyway. I watch as she pours my mug full of the piping hot brew. Caffeinated. I look over my cup at the diners all around me. For a Shoney's on a Friday night in a do-nothing town, there is a crowd. All are eating their meals as if nothing was happening. But I know what is going on. And I know why it is happening.

Again I lean over my words that attempt to portray the real lives around me. The first line, for instance, is about the couple two tables down, on the right. He is a country boy. He has grown up in the country, has been used to rodeos, horses; used to that frame of mind because he has no other significant influences. His scuffed boots tell just where he is from; his starched cowboy shirt, where he is going. He is being sucked into the very real world which has been created in this and many similar areas, that is the life of the common man of the country. He looks around at the world and sees a vision blurred by soft corners, easy goals, and hidden problems that are to remain hidden. He never sees the Truth, whatever that is, but rather a half-truth handed down to him from his society. She is from the same community. She is blinded by the same vision. She, too, will never grasp Truth. But when it comes right down to it, they are together in their blindness, if they are happy, at the highest level they can possibly rest on, then why does anything greater matter?

Confounded, I turn to throw my stones at another table. I peer into the lives with my neighbors across the little divider fence have lived. Sipping coffee, just as I am, they talk. They have loved, gotten married, and now they are here, eating the seafood buffet at Shoney's on a Friday night. It isn't a romantic spark that keeps their love alive, but rather an occasion. It is nothing more than an occasion, really. They are, always dull and listless with each other. The lines on her face from worrying reflect the ones on his hands from working. They say very little, although her mouth is moving constantly. She speaks of church, of friends, of family, of dinners, of money. She talks a lot to never say anything. Maybe I am expecting too much from an after dinner coffee, but I listen to them until they leave and, though they have been married severla years, they have not spoken of love, related topics, or of their lives together, not once do they grasp the chance to even look at each other, much less in a loving way. Is this what is to become of love in this day and age? What about the happiness of the other couple, was this headed in the same direction?

More coffee. Maybe it will bring me to some form of conclusion to this dilemma. If not, maybe the cigarette that calms my nerves. I look down at the poetry. Now I remember, there is one stone I can throw from this fortress of coffee, cake, and words. That lonely man in the corner. He is very odd, perhaps, to the other diners, but not to me. I know who he is. He is the vagrant for whom no one cares. He looks to kindly churches to provide him with boots for the job he has not found, but even the churches today are spent of kindness. I feel sorry for him, he has reached out so often for companions of any kind, but he has wrought his fate upon himself. He has tried to gain strength through solitude, and we can see where it's got him. But really, where is he? I stare at him and see him calmly eating a third plate from the all-you-can-eat seafood bar. He survives.

My fort is crumbling. LaQuita takes away the last bit of cake. The coffee pot is refilled--I feel alone, my only defense myself. I hope it can sustain me. I hope it can stand strong against the stones that are thrown at me.

And then I look up into the big round eyes of a four year old boy. Who is he to be looking at me? What is he looking at? His father tells him to turn around and he unwillingly does so. But this leaves me here alone. I want him to turn back to me. I need to look into his eyes, to find some fault, some little crag in society in which I can make a toehold before I slip back into total loss. He turns back. I stare at his glaring eyes, wide with excitement. They are glowing with....admiration? Ha! No. He looks too soon to others for truth. He should learn to control himself, to keep his eyes focused on his own food. But as I stare longer, I see the one certain thing which I cannot bear to see as true. Looking into his eyes I see myself, and my own eyes begin to fail me, as I see my own reflection in his. I see a crouched man, looking pitiful and worn. I see a man that no one dares feel sympathy for, a man despising the world, even the very help that could save him. I see a man crouched over poems and himself truly understanding neither. I see an unhappy, loveless, friendless man. My head falls heavily on the table, spilling coffee, and I feel my spirits pouring tears from my eyes. Yet even now, no one is watching, except the boy.