to be alone, it is not that you must
be a piece of shit to others, but
it helps... to turn off the phone
when a long-time friend calls
and without a look of pain go on,
to kiss without interest, to smile
without satisfaction, to invent pain
just to make idiots out of those
that love you enough to take care of you
as "the pain goes away", to find
the opposite sex repulsive while
"falling in love" with two women
in one night, to lie without reason
to the most important person in the world
as the glum faces of broken middle-age lives
fly past your window on the cross-town bus