Nothing Like.

I've been reading and hearing about boredom my whole life
and it's been interesting. As a child
I knew it well: I identified it with my impatience,
when something good was coming,
and wanting it to hurry up. I was easily distracted
from it, though, and I never seemed to feel impatient

when nothing good was coming.

Still,
I was comfortable that I always knew
what boredom was, from books and people's testimony.
I liked to moan myself, "I'M BORED,"
in those precious moments where time stretched out,
between deciding what to do.

That was fun.

It was like the clarion (or closer to klaxon)
alarum, a trumpet call to action and arms,
and having been duly and officially bored (which
I knew was fair and sufficient justification for whatever
mischief) and even wallowed in it a bit, I'd leap
up charged with holy purpose, distracted
by the thought of something unjustly, unduly
undone, and dash off to do it
justice. Typically,
I was of no importance,
and I knew it. Days were full,
and too few - even moreso now.

Lately,
though, my importance grown
to roughly eight-year-old levels
(from my usual seven), or at any rate,
a year or so ago - I was reading

about boredom, and with a shock, I suddenly noticed
it was something alien. I'd easily enough always
understood it through others' accounts, and assumed
my feelings were just the same, but.

No.

Nothing like.

There's nothing to do that's worth doing?
Nothing to absorb the interest or excite
the imagination? Nothing worthy of one's
attention? Not even what you did before,
threw yourself into and through it, came out
even more? I thought it well through,
and felt bad. Ashamed,

maybe, for the first time (third)
in my dumb stupid life. I'd never

been bored.
I was only pretending.
Boredom for enjoyment.
Another fake-ass self-discovery of self,
caught red handed in the act! Boredom
interests me more than ever now,
and I suspect I must try to pretend
to be patient. I must steel myself,
and make of me something hard

to distract