A One-Man Famine

Loneliness is sun on a desert traveler
No shade of friends
I know from experience and observation.

At 19, I said I could get by without other people
Enough to make a novice psychologist blush
Methinks the young man doth protest too much
A cry for help, for friendship.

Oh the variety of perspectives
despondent, delirious with self-pity,
annoyed with the prospect of a steady ongoing existence
Let something spectacular happen, anything

An ear in me waits to hear:
“Young man you have a few more days…
Set your things in order.”

But trailing days bring more of the same
Joy for a mouth sore…sensation from a stubbed toe
They can’t take that from me.

Put me in the infirmary, run tests, find nothing if you must
But act like I’m on the planet

I have felt terrible, my teeth loosening,
Like early starvation, a one-man famine

They have sent me home from school, from work
Only for me to return to no fanfare, appetite regained

Regarding the course of my life…

One of me honored my parents
Another sought a revolution - guess who won?
I did as most others
Stumbled into success, a few vices,
And hard to pin down virtues
Youthful sickness availed,
what I needed
battles with unhappiness,
bottoming-out periods

William James said it’s cruelest to be ignored
I start packing
You walk out humming and return in song
I am still packing
Hoping to hear:
“I will miss you when you’re gone.”

None of us knows what the other is thinking
I see you less than happy
I have left home that way
I have come back that way

I ponder treatises to equip the lonely
Words for what lies ahead
But I stop myself,
Solace is a personal thing

Retiring and rising on a regular schedule,
eating properly,
engaging the spirit
locating sources of companionship
find it for yourself…

If you believe in what you do
The threat is low

At the risk of being heavy handed
Don’t remain in isolation…
Desert-dwellers are consumed with water