A Lonesome Deduction

The world’s a stage, set

With wooden men,

With toy guns,

With tin barrels.

When was it time for

The curtain to rise?

And the plaster faces, painted,

To play their clockwork parts?

No emotion, no spark, no

Empathy

For me,

For the outside crowd.

They move,

Huddle,

Like apes for a tree-fruit,

Looking down, backs curled, the sky a nothing.

And up in the stratosphere,

Head light, blood cool, boiling,

I’m looking down,

At the stage, reading their script.