The Plaster Is Peeling

City life is millions of people being lonesome together. - Thoreau

longer than longing

alarm bells in my sullen head bonging and gonging

pictures of zilch hanging crooked on rusty nails

emptiness drooling

nothingness fooling

fissured and grueling

the plaster on the walls is peeling

unrelenting

lamenting

echoing fingers on a chalkboard

it's got me by the throat

choking my essence

no page for it in my calendar

this frigid season

under my skin like a splinter

festering in the core of my reactor

this damned nuclear winter

this metastatic nightmare

my soul is reeling

devoid of feeling

everything and more it's cracked up to be

crushed by a steadily falling ceiling

because

the plaster is peeling

.

Author's Note

"I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone." - Thoreau