To Be Alone
I want to be alone.
Not forever, but just for a while.
A peaceful escape,
alone with my thoughts.
But it’s all around, this human race.
Complete intrusion in every place.
Always, everywhere in my face
with stubborn pride and lack of grace.
They dig their way into my mind,
demand attention, make me blind
to the fact that they are kind
and loving. Still, me, they bind.
---
I stay at home to be alone.
Not forever, but just for a while.
A peaceful escape,
alone with my thoughts.
But protected as I am by walls
their sound intrudes into my halls.
Cars and planes and loud footfalls
from neighbours packed in ever small-
er spaces to exert their thrall.
To grow their flock, their own cabal.
Children playing, throwing balls;
a pack of them creates a squall
of shouting, crying, high-pitched wails,
piercing straight across the veil
of music played to block the gale-
force noise that makes my mind derail.
Innocent they are, but still they fail
to give me peace. What this entails
is melancholy, weary exhale.
My house becomes a sonic jail.
---
I go to the forest to be alone
Not forever, but just for a while.
A peaceful escape,
alone with my thoughts.
But always come the rustling of leaves,
obvious gait from beyond the trees
as sound and words and laughter cleave
into my thoughts; attention thieves.
“Good morning!” they say, and my reprieve
is broken now. I sigh, and heave,
and smile right back to hide my grieve-
ance that they be so profoundly naïve.
I hold the façade until they leave.
Once they’ve gone along their ways,
into the distance I might gaze;
through the early morning haze,
through the luscious forest maze
hoping to see the sun, it’s rays.
Instead I see scenes of dismay;
Buildings, housing, gyms, cafés.
All around these humans graze
and decimate the land, always.
All around they give their praise
unto themselves, until they raze
the natural world, with sparse malaise,
and in its place, housing is raised.
Their breath becomes a toxic blaze.
---
I go to coffee shops to be alone
Not forever, but just for a while.
A peaceful escape,
alone with my thoughts.
A single blade of grass in here,
a human glade, should have no fear
as here I hide among my peers.
Yet when my mind begins to clear
notifications drill into my ears.
Texts and calls and emails blear
at all times, just like a spear
thrown towards the one who steers
my mind. Unseated! Focus smeared,
and now responsibility rears
it ugly head. The body veers
without the mind, forced into gear,
and dragged toward holy career.
When I find, again, respite
and tear myself from worker’s plight
the young, again, blockade the light
with parents helping, day and night.
Having kids is a human right
they say; the right to fill my sight
and space with yet more blight.
Two of them now scream and fight
but mum is pregnant, shows delight
in what, to me, would cause great fright.
Is it me that’s not all right?
What I want is time and space
to call my own, quiet’s embrace.
While we respect physical space,
my mental space? That has no place
in the rat race; in any place
in every place,
cyberspace,
the marketplace,
physical, mental, VR space,
in each of these I am encased
by the commonplace human race.
Neither subspace, nor any headspace
is good enough a hiding place.
---
There is nowhere to be alone
Not forever, but just for a while.
No peaceful escape,
to be alone with my thoughts.
And there never will be.