Less The People.... Poem by RIC BASTASA

i once told
my high school classmates
who planned a reunion
this coming june
of 2020 that
jean paul sartre once
said that
Hell is other people
and this beautiful classmate
of mine retorted without much haste,
"oh, he must not be part of
the people? Is he really heaven? "

and then i reflected it upon
myself, i should not have said
it but it came from a great
existentialist philosopher whom
i admire much during my
college days, and for which
during those times,
when i spent most of the time
for myself and to myself,
and to which i also really
thought, that
indeed
Hell is other People.


i am not heaven
but just as i still believe
in it,
Hell is indeed other people,

and whatever that really means,
it means just what it really means
THAT hELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
and so, let me say,
i am living a good life
and independent one
less the hassle
and less the people.