Speak To Me Poem by Frank Bana

Speak to me, Aloneness
You so demanding, with no
Whisper to suggest
To this bubble-wrapped heart
That aches to summon you

Tell me now, Aloneness
What do you expect
When the time comes in life
To enter solitary
Where the cell is nameless
One of a thousand in
Prisons without address

For I know only to speak
To the cells of emptiness
But there is no one listening
While you perch in silence.

So typical of you
To prevent me getting through
To turn aside this voice
Deeply faded though it is
What is that you said?
Only nothing, once again.
It's just another day
On the blade of an etched calculus
In which I'm so very glad
Not to hear from you.

- Now I taste the awful rumours
In the sourness of my gruel
The massacre of innocence
Desecration of the school

That's how the stories come to me
As teardrops from the dark
The terrifying history
Of the tortured human heart -

Of course, there's someone else:
Please to meet my Brother Cancer.
Cancer lives here too
He is silent too.
Here comes the Executioner
For the last who is to leave
See - I am not alone. Aren't you jealous yet?

Where your voice, Aloneness?
Your last-minute reprieve?