People's Trances Poem by Gary Diamond

I don't know how it is, or why it is, but it's certainly there.
I've seen perfectly normal, somewhat intelligent people
Suddenly lose all track of time and all sense of place
And it seems to affect most of the human race,
this,
Curious affliction.

People walk into their air-conditioned, overlit shopping malls.
People walk in as if to a heavenly haven, oblivious of each other.
They window shop until they find something.
And when they find that special thing, the world must melt.
And all it is then is them, the thing and the glass window.

They walk towards it as if in a trance.
They walk towards it into the path of young mothers
Into the way of old codgers
Annoying the pace of a passing, baseball cap teenager.
Yes,
Yes,
It's a curious affliction.

There is a phrase I like to use.
It's only two words, but they're good ones.
I call it 'spatial awareness'.
All of us have this in varying degrees.
When people slip into this trance they seem to
Lose it completely.
It's very strange.

I can't say it's ever happened to me.
Even in an aisle surrounded by my two favourite things
I can still perceive everything else around me.
But it happens to some people.

This is the drug.
This is the consumerist plague.
It's why credit cards exist.
It's why the economy heads endlessly back and forth to recession.
All it seems to take is a bright sign, a radio commercial.
And it ignites people's trances.