Tom Bell Poet Prose Poetry

On Life (For Rene Bennett)

"Loneliness has never earned a day's pay.
     What I've learned, first of all, is that loneliness chooses it's own weapons.  It 
hasno distinguishing marks, and comes in no colors at all.  Sometimes, it will 
creep up on you, and at other times, it will take a poke at you and stalk off.  In 
either case, you're left by yourself, holding your stomach, winding itself into 
corkscrews.
     If happiness is circular, as some people claim, then loneliness is trapezoidal.  
With those two parallel lines that never meet and are permanently boxed in.  Only 
the lonely could identify with the quixotic quadrilateral.
     One more thing; loneliness is sexless and ageless.  It affects everyone.  Like 
the panhandler said; "People are crazy.  They won't even listen to me.  They just 
walk away."  So I gave him a quarter, and he added it to his handful of change.  
Change, but no change.  Everything remains the same when you're alone.  As 
you're standing in someone else's pouring rain, it will hit you: the elemental 
distraction at the base of your life is yourself......"  written when I was twenty years 
old

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