Afraid of Everyone

It's hard enough to want more from your life without being laughed at by the man in the corner-shop for buying just a chocolate orange and milk.

I'm so nervous these days, I can hardly look anyone in the eye.

I'm afraid of everyone. Everyone has an agenda, everyone hates your stupid ugly face.

There are those who will tell you they like you, that they want to caress you, they might even tell you they love you. I just cannot let it be. I cannot accept that any human being would want to act positively towards me. There is always an ulterior motive.

Past experience has proven that love is a difficult beast to tame, and usually you and your partner are fighting different battles on the same field, without either side knowing. Friendship too has a dagger behind its back sometimes - not always. But there are those who will use you and slash your face if you dare to come to them with a problem. Melodrama is one thing - but it may well be genuine; and what do you do as the blood streams down your face as you hug your best friend and their arms slowly drop, and you're left there once again, pouring bodily fluids into the bedsheets, just like old times. Who do you go to when you have no one who cares, or no one who can help, at the very least. Do you wrap the rope around your neck and pretend that that's it? Over and out? No, you're too dramatic for that. What's the point if you can't hear the applause? Or the jeers?

So love is a beast best swallowed whole, man after man, night after night, drinking milk from the bottle, not even bothering with the coco pops you bought because you can't stand the muesli any more. One day at a time. Thursdays are the worst. Wednesday has reasonable television - you can sit and switch everything off, not take in any food and regurgitate your sorrows to the void once again - and no one listens. Just like before. The world won't listen to you.

Everyone is afraid of everyone else. No one is afraid of the bomb anymore. Now there's something everyone can be afraid of - total nuclear annihilation. There's something we can all be worried about. Did we love better before the wall fell? Did people fuck better knowing that sword of Damocles was forever hanging, ready to crash to the earth and make barren the world?

We should be afraid of the bomb, not each other.

So everyone hates my stupid ugly face, and they don't even want my semen, they just want rid of theirs; where I put it I'm sure they don't care. Out of sight, out of mind.

I am out of sight and out of mind - and no one minds. I'm slowly drifting apart, just like that great continent all those years ago. My arms are separate, and I don't care what they do. My legs continue walking, and my mouth spews words and takes in genitals. Revolting pastime. There I am, an archipelago that no one visits, and no one cares to recognise, with that mighty set of volcanoes - spewing it's bile and ash and ruining no one's travel plans, silently down there near Australia. People who loved when they could walk all the way from the north to the south on my mighty mass cannot any longer, and so they hate me. Hate me because I am broken, and so they cannot stand the sight of me any longer, down there near Australia, spewing the bile and ash, and the world doesn't listen.