Minesweeper dreams

This is not a poem. Seriously, it's not.

A poem is what people call a collection of ideas that they don't quite understand. A poem is open to interpretation. A poem can change lives, if heard by the right person, but to most everyone else a poem is another cute little muse by some cute little author who can now be ignored. It's the only way we can rationalize so many meaningful thoughts and expressions crammed into so little space. For instance:

Why do people place so much importance on the least significant things?
Why do people blame their problems on events far away, a government they voted into office, and a God they don't believe in?
Why do we talk, talk endlessly about world issues but do nothing?
Why are we somehow unable to bring our enormous surplus of food to starving third-world countries, despite having every known means of transportation at our disposal?
Why do people lack empathy?
Why is there clearly so much work to do in the world, and yet there are so many people without jobs?
Why have we made countless movies, written endless books, based entire lives around the concept of love, and yet no one can give any explanation of what it actually is?
Why does my head itch?
Why do people claim to know what animals are thinking, and make decisions about how pets are supposed to live based off of that?
Why do children dream of going on adventures and saving the world, while capable adults with a sense of actual responsibility would run away at the first sign of danger?
Why is a twelve-page essay full of long words that, let's be honest here, no one really understands, written by some scientist-type person in a laboratory far, far away more valuable than the exact same thing explained by the guy you met at the bar in under thirty seconds?
Why does this generation believe that the less you are actually wearing, the better dressed you are?
Why are some hypothetical numbers you don't actually own on a computer in some other country that will never have any real impact on you or anyone around you more important than a human life?
Why can insignificant specks of dust inspire more fascination than the largest structures civilization has ever constructed?
Why is black the new white?
Why are people so eager to accept ill news while anything good in the world is ignored, forgotten or overlooked?
Why are bunnies cute?
Why is doing something for the very first time more worthy of celebration than the first time it is done perfectly, or, for that matter, right at all?
Why do people cause enormous amounts of devastation in foolish attempts to save time?
Why is making lots and lots of money more important than saving the environment, protecting people's lives, or even basic human happiness?
Why are you listening to me list question after question that no one really has any answer to?

Now, that is not a poem. It cannot be a poem. I REFUSE to let anyone call what I have just said a poem. Because anyone can listen to a poem. But if you listen expecting that you probably won't understand it... then you never will.

And that is all I have to say about that.

I don't know which is more insulting, that she called it a poem or that she expected me not to understand the joke.

If you thought the mystery was funny, you should have seen our outtakes. From before we'd learned everything. Even onstage, Jesse was still a he... sometimes. Drove us crazy. And the first time Shaun tried carrying her offstage, her skirt hitched up a bit. Well, maybe more than a bit. And the time Ellen crept off behind that kind of dividing curtain thing to change, forgetting that she was completely surrounded by windows. And Becca is still driving me CRAZY!!! because whenever she bends down, I can see down the back of her pants. There's a line of shadow where two not-exactly-unobtrusive folds of flesh meet. Need I say more? I felt like I should have told her, or something, but how? "Hey, I've been seeing down the back of your pants..." Not really going to make me popular. And I'm not staring, by the way, I just have an irritating tendency to notice things people don't want me to. So I just live with it.
In short, it was a night punctuated by girls' underwear. Bizarre. Shame about Mr. Chuckles, really.

I wonder what's going to happen to the crinkled little paper heart. Maybe it will be thumbtacked to the wall next to my business card. I'll probably never know. I'm not allowed in that room anymore.