Why Do You Keep Me Hanging On? Poem by Neil Solan

Why do you keep me hanging on?
Like a battered housewife, so sick and tired but can’t let go.
Like a rusty old hand, to robust and proud to just let go and let fall.
Just enough distance to keep me satisfied but not close enough to truly satisfy.
Like a lost puppy never to be found, wandering aimlessly in search of something, anything to give hope.
Walking off the edge of a cliff to a rapturous reception and coming to the harsh truth; the awkward reality that there is nothing to break this surely monstrous fall into the void.
The chasm of nothingness.
This magnitude, these x and y’s of reality.
Why do you keep me guessing?
Like a man at the end of life’s rope, smiling at anyone, following wandering eyes in search of a reflected smile or glimpse of acknowledgment.
Like a child with its plastic hammer beating the kinetics of yet more plastic.
Like the journalist with failure written into their blood, with ‘thread’ and ‘hope’ implanted in their brain.
Like a bristle on a mound of chin.
Like a candle on a sea of cake.
Like a mong.