Only the Lonely

 

(for MLK)

 

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We alone, Children of Sorrow,

can appreciate

this kind of melody and lyric.

 

Listen,

each splinter of verse the singer

sings as if with the flick of a whip is a sacred

summons for us to be more zealous

in punishing ourselves.

 

Slumped here in the chill

of air-con in our zone of seclusion,

we jealously guard

our hoard of anguish.

We have a variety of wild dreams

and we hanker for the wildest.

I would ask for rain

and you for drought.

But look, aren’t we

just soused harlequins

when the naughty Tivoli bulbs blink?

 

Truth is, we are

the cartographers and sovereigns

of our own cave of illusions,

such illusions we’ve nurtured and nursed

the way we nurse ourselves now

sipping the poison that salves the back

of our tongue, the gullet of our throat.

 

It is forthright, therefore

that we continue to drift.

Let us congratulate and toast

ourselves

and regard this as one more play

that should have been sung.

 

Very well. Down your drink,

my friend, because another bottle is coming,

and other poison.

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