A Song With Many Voices: All the Lonely People

I have always been here, among the lonely people. Despite having people around me, my battles exist within my head and body. To you, I may look normal, but on the inside is a scene entirely different. My constant companions are sadness, frustration, exhaustion — even a fortified fortress to shield me from what the world has and could continue to do to me. Those walls isolate me from my family. The shadows are filled with creatures that know how to hurt me if I move too close. So, you see, I am one of the lonely people. But I am not alone.
Sarah Doughty)

All the Lonely People—

they converge,

invisible at intersections

of Life and Death,

strangely untouched by hands of those

simpatico.

How can it be that so many similar

do exist while lost

to one another?

All the Lonely People—

they are unalone, and yet

desperately segregated;

misinterpretations

made by cold analyses

appease

the masses,

give excuses to

maintain blindness.

Kindra M. Austin

All the lonely people

We hide

In shadows

Contemplating reason

Bleeding truth

Brutality and madness

Clinging to singing

Bones of what used to be

Combing catacombs

In search of slightest light

And notes of hope

Scribbled on worn script

A story of happy endings

Dangling on threatening thread

Of human connection

Just out of reach

Contradictory condition

Unaccompanied euphony

Love song for the lonely

1Wise-Woman

Sometimes this house like walls within,

life angel-blind or saint-sedated.

Wearing madness as a hat,

phrasing themselves into escapes,

sunken flames and the mirror broken,

every memory drained of wonder,

the lonely people:

afraid that birth may be repeated.

Basilike Pappa

All the lonely people

Sleep waking dark streets

Under overcast skies,

Red rimmed eyes

And sepia toned faces

Singing songs no one will hear,

Writing poems no one will read,

Born with hope and potential

Dying with nothing but a name,

Buried in a box

Covered with loose dirt

And half hearted prayers.

No one was saved.

John W. Leys

All the lonely people,

Where do we all belong?

With masks of happiness concealing our fears,

We pass others by.

Looking for meaning between echoing footfalls,

Where emptiness only lies.

Oh how I wish I could remove this mask,

And show others how I feel.

For lonely people need more than just objects and things,

Connection, understanding, and a listening ear.

We belong to each other from beginning to end,

We all share similar fears.

All these lonely people,

Where do we all belong?

Michael Erickson

Look at the lonely

Making connections with other invisible friends

It never ends

Look in the mirror

They cannot see eye to eye with their reflection’s gaze

Live in a daze

The image in the mirror

What makes you feel alive??

All the lonely people

Belong to the same tribe

Ward Clever

A name for the beetles

to eat along with the flowers

at my lone grave

buried on a hill

under a chill

and no one came

I know now where

the alone belong

but I could have been saved

by a song

that nobody sang

look at all the lonely people

you should know that it’s

all wrong

Olde Punk

all the lonely people

croon their heartbroken harmonies

stretch aching arms

across unspoken chasms

estranged

in disconsolate silences.

yearning for connection

they swaddle themselves

in quilts of embroidered sorrows,

every painstaking stitch

a shimmering titanium shield.

all the lonely people

asphyxiate

on swallowed inarticulations

while their marrows vibrate

–         hummed exhalations –

with universal laments.

Aurora Phoenix

we fear it,

the yellow beast in Prufrock’s alley,

when the grimy backstreets

of nobody’s business will teem with life.

the moon rises

and in her pearly face i see myself,

paw prints in the dirt.

orange street lamps spill across her glow,

leaving

watery damage,

green fingers and old jewelry,

deadened with use.

all the lonely people –

they fill up on earth and sky.

Lois E. Linkens

To see sanguine ropes of dirt and mollusk

we walk under the skins of disgust, often choking

Slumping, sliding under the caskets of Coffins

Biting the threads of skulls, breathing the sands of hope

We have a thumping noise, striking our iris and hands

Shivers and cold Noises.

Filling the brim of the Planet with liquids and milk

we march towards our home.

All the lonely people,

We exist still, under the cleft of your chins,

under the blue sonograms,

under the pits and pits.

We are the lonely people.

(Devika Mathur)

Arrows and stones: a child’s song

Protects the fragile boy

From all who want to paint him

As if he were as blank as Locke

As if he just arrived on the cul-de-sac

That morning for the first time:

He had not.

He was there the day before.

He had been there days before that

And so on… like a hall of mirrors

reflecting him back and forth, forever,

He’d been there.

Now, though, now,

They see him cry

And think: AHA! A fete!

“On him, I can paint all the shades of my pain,”

As if the color under his skin wasn’t on the spectrum.

Stephen Fuller

All the lonely people

where do we all belong?

trapped behind sheets of ice

our voices whisper

our heartbeats slow

our fingers too stiff

too unpracticed

to break through our walls to reach out

and touch

those technicolor people

who blaze bright before our starved eyes

who somehow laugh

love

and live without reservation

what do they know

that we don’t?

we long to gather their light

their warmth

cradle it to our frozen chests

feed the ember that flickers there

make it smolder

make it burn

until our desperate cries of

“I am!”

finally cuts through the night like a knife

Christine Ray