(Warning! It's charcoal dark)
It is subtly present, like the perennial shadow following one
Usually one keeps it under a tight lid, filed away in obscurity
until perhaps something escalates the pressure to a crescendo:
A shitty day at work, a failed attempt, an anniversary which triggers a memory, until…it can’t be contained any longer
Then, the subtlety is overpowered by a human wail, mute yet piercing; as it resonates like a tidal wave crashing on the surf.
How many times in your life, have you’ve been asked:
“How are you?” By a neighbor, co-worker, or sales clerk
And if only once you were to utter: “Actually, I am hemorrhaging
pain man.” I can bet you ten bucks that the immediate reaction would be shock; for it’s simply not done! While simultaneously, they're figuring out how to intricately disengage, from a truly awkward exchange.
Wouldn’t be nice for a change to expect in exchange…
A heartfelt hug, a mercy fuck, a freebie lunch, or soothing
Massage…with no strings attached?
Mostly when things are very quiet, so quiet that you can listen to your self, when lacking the perpetual mental distractions of the television, radio, gridlock traffic, or banal chats…then! Then is when one usually faces this formidable monster.
Sometimes it lures us into a masochistic fest when walking through memory lane. The shadows on the wall enabled by the street lamp, play havoc on the mind. They dance, tease, and contort into abstract shapes, which then evoke memories of another night spent in someones arms, of furtive hands, and delicious lips -- if only one could turn back time, and right so many, many things. At the very least, one would enjoy profound peace. Yet....
When one tosses on the expansive bed, and feels such palpable
Loneliness and acute need for human touch, yet, what's only tangible and accessible, Is a pillow, some knick knacks,and framed photographs of those loved, and perhaps long gone. One may be tempted to subdue this monster, by grabbing on to a crutch. Be It a cigarette, a sniffer of scotch, or engaging a sexual worker (and those come in different forms.), simply to feel the texture of skin-on skin-contact...
For we are instilled with the craving for touch to nurture us, since birth. One may seek another to alleviate the pain, offering the body as currency exchange. Yet, After the high subsides, one may perhaps, still feel empty inside, desolated, and still lonely nonetheless. Sometimes I wonder when a woman sits alone in a nursery home; as she looks back on how she conducted her life, now -- in the twilight of such -- if perhaps she thinks about how things might have been otherwise...
When her youth has faded, as well as her complicit lover; the one she perhaps conspired with, or cajoled her into negating life to a child. Perhaps she kept the man for a while -- or she climbed the corporate ladder, until she bumped her head on the glass ceiling...many times over. She now has the means to pay for impersonal care giving; as the vultures fly in orbit…hoping to become her beneficiaries. In a planet almost running out of resources, with over six-and-a-half billion people...
Inhabiting it, how can we become hostages to loneliness? We don’t reach out to others' enough for we are afraid of the unfamiliar -- and of rejection too. We are only human, and we need someone…does anybody care? Loneliness hurts, the pain is acute. Yet, it could easily be remedied too, for no man is an island. Very early this morning, an indigent man asked me for spare change. As I gave him a dollar, I looked into his desolate eyes, and felt compelled to ask for a hug for myself -- for us.
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