How’re Things?

The practised ease
of hey-whats-ups
The pretence of familiarity
with relative strangers
and unknowns.
The concern you express
The shit that you seem to give
About things you never think of, after or before
About people who you’d rather not know about
But have to
Before the lets-move-on-to-why-we’re-heres
This kills you, and also speaks
of the death that lives inside
We are lesser selves of our selves
And the more we try become,
The lesser and lesser.