Author Information
Man of Life: One is One Alone
He was alone, almost.
Mind and life swelled behind
His greying eyes.
As if his internal had taken the initiative
To age his weary windows.
His hair the same, but he felt old,
Frail.
Now he sat,
Wincing at the odors of the bar,
The dulled out sounds of living.
The man played at the table,
Gripping his fingers onto the drying beer stains,
Feeling their residue between his fingers.
Disgust minute, but perceivable.
He thought at how this place disagreed with him.
Was there life here?
Or the fading in thereof.
He measured his ferocity of life
And agreed it little under subtle.
But he was driven by interest
Of how this individual place
Held meaning to the pertinence of his own.
For some must be here,
Or he must go.
Beauty found within devoid beauty
Rips at the seams of detachment
And hurls a man into awe.
The man, hence,
Heard whispers adoring
Of the piercing tones in time.
They lavished his ears and his eyes snapped.
She decorated the air she filled
With intoxicating movement.
Disjointed yet calculated
The woman hurled her body to and fro,
The Sparks her mouth created.
They sat across from each other
And the man stared to her,
Her eyes were bountiful;
Glistening with life.
And as she smiled at the man,
He was reduced to a form of self
He believed was a comfort wholehearted.
“Bearti, like Be-hearty!”
Closer he felt, and weaker he became.
Her name gave life to his frailty of character
And so, instinctually,
He poured himself out into the crevasse
Separating the two together.
He winced when he glanced up out of his hole
To gauge her reaction in essence,
To see if he would disgust her
As much as he had himself.
And yet her head was tilted,
Eyes agape
And a nod that solely meant
‘Go on.’
His words had never been spoken
Aside from to him and himself.
And in amongst his sorrowful tales
He wondered why he could fold his tongue
To utter the words of truth.
To work his brain from mind to vibration
To word to weakness.
And she furrowed her smile in such a way
That showed, not understanding,
But a justifying consent
That such was not unfathomable
To the prospect of living.
The man wasn’t sure if he enjoyed
Such an idea,
Yet he was comforted all the same.
And she saw this,
As she saw all of him.
And all she responded was;
“One is one alone.”
And as her eyes glazed over,
The man knew he would listen.
He knew he would understand a facet of thinking
That intertwines with his own.
He wanted to hear,
To learn in respect,
The tales of woe and birth
That this intriguing woman kept.
“One must understand that the self is the self alone.
To trade sections of the self with that of which you’ve gauged
Is to solely undermine the self in unison
With how it is meant to be built.
We are meant to see ourselves – not like her or her or her –
But something that is like itself;
That adheres to itself;
That is solely that.
I believe that that is happiness.”
“When I was me, before I was me –
Young, exuberant and deluded –
My thoughts were so outwardly focused.
Importance of self is irrelevant
To external stimulation and pleasure.
Your sandpit best friend triggers a joy
That must be derived of purity,
So to make me happy is to be true,
For that is all we must know.
That, thus, is me –
That, thus, is where I must take myself from,
The outer layers that appease the inner.”
“I was disgusted at the prospect of being a being.
I saw the way of life as a huge fucking mirror of broken mirrors.
We stepped around the broken shards
In ignorance of them,
In fear of being cut
And minimalized.
We are little made big, are we not?
We are pieces of that which we know in theory,
And they amalgamate
Into that which we occupy;
Think of ourselves in.
Reflections of reflections of reflections;
Countless add-ons of the same obscurity.
And yet we have created this way of living
That inherently utilizes this,
And ignores it.
Funny, no?”
“And so a 12-year-old in math class
Raising her hand and vomiting her concerns,
Is degraded to an anomaly;
Someone who’s little parts
Have accumulated to something left of center.
Not right.”
“I would run my eyes across my frame
And hence feel disgust and loathing.
I was not me,
There was this disconnect –
Something askew –
That propelled my anxiety of how I showed
What my mind believed itself to be.
I wanted to destroy it
As it reminded me of my mismatch.
I had grown out of my own skin,
And it reeked on my body.
At 16 I was gauging happiness from the external,
But my internal propensities yanked at my leash
And dragged me back to the core handicap.
My belongings, my voice,
People saw me through an image
That was not how I knew me to be.
And thus I was alone.”
“Thus dancing directed my mind.
As I choreographed myself,
I felt in line with what people saw of me.
I was in sync with myself, and it was bliss.
As I conveyed a message,
My mind wriggled out into my body
And they worked together.
It was the first time I was proud of myself
Beyond that of others’ praise.
I felt as if I was showing myself clearly.”
“I watched myself on video
And I felt a nostalgia of nothing
But what I had hoped to feel for a lifetime.
It showed me doing that which
Made physical and coherent
My shortcomings of mind to body.
Rectified them.”
“The irony is that this is my story, not yours.
This is what I have learnt for me, by me.
Never underestimate the uniqueness of the self.
Others are not you, and you are not others.
Find that which makes you and you will be made.
This disconnect of mind and matter evolved to content
When the disparage is outsourced to a defining ‘something.’
Whatever it may be.”
And so the two of them sat there in silence,
Outside of the pounding of the man’s
One tonne tear drops that spilled from his guardedness.
The girl studied his face,
Curled up her mouth into a message;
‘You must learn,’
And gingerly left the man alone.
