What It Truly Means to Be Polite

Given each of you belongs to multiple in-groups,
It follows each of you has multiple out-group selves
That bob along behind your heads like awkward balloons
As you socialize along with others who belong.

In office conference rooms, at organizational
Meet-ups, in locker rooms, at church socials, at the pub,
In military units, among concert-goers,
Around a small, smoky, daytime hearth, in every club,

Everyone has multiple Venn halos hovering
In overlapping, shimmering arcs around themselves,
And it’s only the coordinated dissembling
Of the assembled, immediate in-group members,

Discreetly not openly observing each others’
Attentive, ghostly, wavering out-group member selves,
Which vastly outnumber the in-group members mingling,
That keeps any gathering from disintegrating.