Sleep deprived,
 zombie like,
as mindless as air 
and as mechanical as the shifting gears of a manual transmission.
Some have a spark in their eye 
or a bounce in their step;
although panic, fear and frustration 
also litter the sea of faces 
but the most palpable is exhaustion
as the line to the caffeine addiction 
starts ten minutes before the first batch can be cooked.

 /He sits alone, music spinning in his head
as his eyes survey the crowd around him,
watching the goings-on
of the student body en mass.
His addiction something more intellectual than chemical,
intensely more rewarding than a drug fix.
An open book lay before him, 
filled with anything that crosses his mind;
observation, thoughts, ideas,
any words that flow together in just the perfect way.
All written from the same corner of the same crowd,
preferring to draw from the inspiration  
that lies on the outskirts 
of his self-induced social isolation
where the rawness of human nature
polarizes.