Experience is a hand-me-down.

Some one else has these thoughts first

and now it is passed to me.

I handle them with attention.

Sometimes I buff them with inspection

then behold,

they have slipped away,

to someone else,

I am sure.

Certainly there must be

some new wrinkles added,

some corners cut,

sequences altered,

spins of positive

or negative energy applied,

orientations of religion or politics

or comedy overlaid,

all along in this

thought form journey way.

Dare I be holding

the map details in my hands?

You say then I say . . .

How many exchanges

constitute a cultural experience!

Do I need acting lessons,

or am I just miscast?

Should my contact with experience

conclusively be a dark comedy,

after running it through my brain?

Why are all the thoughts

in my script parenthesized?

It seems like my dialogues

are with myself within

and occasionally

someone is mistaken

to overhear them.

I make an excuse for that

but still go on.

Experience, for me, is like that.

It appears that I wear

my experiential reality

on and all around me.

I am one of those people

with handbills for remarks.

That conclusively proves

I have a misguided sense of service.

Most exchanges are abrupt,

as if you have been tagged,

and now I tag you back.

I am definitely co-sponsored

by idealism and whimsy

and I have not quite landed it

securely on the planet

in a thought form journey way.

I ask for tips

and people think I either need

a headhunter or a highlighter.

No, I mean what am I doing here?

These things

that come out of my mind

from experience

must be punch lines

from movies I didn’t see.

Responses from shared experiences

go like this,

there is a pregnant silence,

a slight redirection of the conversation,

like to end something

on a positive note.

That’s what usually happens.

Okay, it may be

a common sense collusion

or an, I’m-missing-essential-parts ruse,

though I am not equipped to tell.

I think I have

a conversational dance card.

I have thought form moves.

Next moments will come . . .

I guess I’ll just peruse these

as melodious thoughts for now

until more come . . .

That is, what one does

in a anecdotal pass-along

experiential hand-me-down world?