[UPDATE: Hear a spoken version of this poem ...]
The Stray
By Antoine
In this town of bustling minds and ticking clocks and overtimes
Among the frenzy most folks find a few others
With whom to forget their hopes and fears
With whom to laugh and cry and vie and get away and enjoy
These people they call their friends
It is the natural order of things
But here we find one lonely soul who stays lonely
As days go by he drifts away from friendships
He sees all the others laughing and enjoying their time together
And wonders why his routine looks so much different from theirs
Everything they have he is missing
He can't explain why but he knows he wants to change it
He knows he would be happier with friends
Every moment that passes he is constantly reminded
He is not like them but dances to a more exotic rhythm
One strange and foreign one they cannot follow
Contemplative overlooked forgotten he feels out of touch
At times he feels included for a spell
But then he fades back out of fashion like a fad a false attraction
He yearns to learn to dance like they do
Sing like they do laugh like they do
There is something they have he is missing
He doesn't know what it is but tries his best to put his finger on
The trigger that will solve his problems
Find his answers cure his troubles ease his pain
He questions himself over again
What is it ? he asks
Am I not interesting enough ? not funny enough ? not attractive enough ?
not strong enough ? not confident enough ? not talkative enough ?
not friend enough for them ? I try my hardest so why don't I work
He feels like a wind up toy that nobody cares enough about to wind
They have all moved on to bigger and better and peopler people
Who have the same unspoken link the same passion password as themselves
He finds himself a lemming in a dilemma
Faced with no good way to let them know he wants to be people too
Wants to be friend wants to be enemy wants to be a cog like them
To help those near him turn by being turned by those who near him help
He wants to be accepted but there is no syntax for such a request
To ask directly would be desperate and untactful
They would cast him out more surely than they had before
But to be quiet about it to tell them hello there in gentle nudges
Demonstrate he damn straight has a reason too to be listened to
Just like them he sees the need for these essential eccentricities
These heys and hearts and harks this humour in humanity
To try it this way goes unnoticed in the scheme of things
It floats beside them in a river of hellos
Streams past them and they hardly hear it
Your voicebox is closed immediately upon opening
Tossed aside to lurk and beg and crawl among the wrappings
You know because you have been there
You have cried out for attention in your politest tone
And they plead no thank yous time and time again
What must I do to be people myself ? he mutters morosely
He is lost
He sees a world in which they have him and he has them,
And he knows there is a way in ...
He has seen it in his dreams:
When he closes his eyes at night, such pleasant visions enter his mind,
Of a place where isolated "he" collides with "you"
To form the cozy coalition, concepts "we" and "ours" and "us."
He feels attached, comforted, charmed, adjusted.
He feels a part of someone, and someone a part of him.
This must be, he thinks, how "friend" feels.
Waking up again the cancer settles on his brain
And feeds him sadness and once more
He is alone
To his diary he whispers
1:38 am November the second
Remember me this
A crazed hallucination of far fetched friend
Has entered my conscience during sleep
I suppose I use my waking hours to rest
And look forward to another high tonight
Farewell fair land
Hello sensation of sneaking sensitivity
I bid thee misanthropic love
At peace we shall at last be
If I happen to remember what went on
