It Must Be Bloody Awful Poem by Alistair Graham

I have been thinking,
out loud in the office again.

Lucille thinks
it may be boredom,
I may be trying to stimulate my intellect
to prevent my brain from shutting down;
a subconscious survival technique,
self-preservation in the face of imminent death.

She thinks,
it's natural human behaviour to adapt to the environment.
She thinks,
when the surroundings change I will be well again;
the thinking out loud will cease.

I don't know what to think
about Lucille's thoughts on the situation; she could be right
though now that I think of it,
when we are at the pub, everybody is
thinking out loud and all the words meet in the air
while all the people doing the thinking have smiles,
a look of interest, or terror on their faces and their hands,
move this way and that in the clouds formed out of
cigarette smoke funnelled from crimson lips
into the delirious mix of cocktail, beer and wine aroma.

Mind you, Lucille says,
it must be bloody awful if you are the only one
thinking out loud, trying to make sense of it all,
while everybody else is
viewing a movie in their heads.