Ordinary Person

They say loneliness is when you
sit with a group of boisterous friends
in a pub, drinking beer, shooting the crap,
the conversation encircling you like flies
around a piece of meat,
the slurred phrases gambolling
along the surfaces of the
peanut riddled tables,
but not inundating
your being, never getting to the core
and leaving some scintillating spark there
that powers reverie later in life.
They say being alone is a choice –
solace in solitude like the placid
lake untroubled by gusts, ever the
same in its blue grace,
holding the secret of bliss
in its aquamarine fingers.
I’ve never known the difference
between the two. Like a zombie
I wander the corridors of both my
apartment and my mind,
fiendish, spectral,
I would reach out if I could,
form a legion of the undead,
singing our hoarse, atonal melodies
with parched throats,
distorting the contours of our
already misshapen faces,
humbling the proud with our laments,
gathering the broken with
our nauseating stench,
urging those who’ve seen suffering
and identified its root that there’s no
escaping it,
no enlightenment, no
brilliant spheres of light,
forming our little clique of
despondent plebs rivalling
those who get a million likes
on Facebook for a picture of
an ugly tattoo of Kurt Cobain
that probably makes him writhe in his grave,
a sorrowed coterie that drinks
cheap Old Monk laced with Thums Up
(Yes, that’s the correct spelling), that
abhors insipid, vainglorious positivity,
the gaudy masks of fortune,
the whitewashed walls,
the cheery, little
neon aphorisms that are supposed
to brighten your existence,
the whole enchilada.