Uncommon
by Sam M. Phillips

I am killing time in a shopping centre while waiting for a bus,
I bore very quickly,
The bright lighting and endless noise do nothing to excite me,
They fill me with resentment,
Why do people come here so much,
Spend so much of their time and money here?

I sit down on a seat,
Luckily I have a pen and notepad with me,
I take it out and begin to write a long poem,
Spilling my bile and indignation onto the page,
It is the only way I can cope with this environment,
I make myself into the unfeeling watcher,
Detached, a recorder rather than a participant.

I feel so alone,
I do not know what the people that pass me think,
If they think as I do,
I only see their actions,
And their actions make them alien.

They hurry about,
Adding to the din,
Babies crying,
Infants shouting,
Teenagers gabbling,
Adults bossing,
The elderly shuffling,
I try muffling it out,
But I can’t,
I’m too sensitive.

I write of consumerism,
And the capitalist West,
Of the blindness of the citizens,
Shopping for presents,
Propping the system up
As the system moves to war.

It depresses me,
But the act of writing,
Of turning it into art,
Transforms me,
And I float for a time,
As long as my pen keeps moving,
I am happy.

This environment isn’t meant to make people like me happy,
I’m not much of a consumer,
I’m too busy writing to go to a job,
I’m too poor to spend my time shopping.

After a time my pen hand grows sore,
My mind grows weary,
And so I slump,
Stare into space,
A blank face amongst the blank faces.

I catch eyes with a few people,
But there is nothing in their eyes that shows they understand me,
And it would be supreme arrogance to believe I understand them.

A woman rants at me with passion for a moment,
Then she moves on to the next person she can find,
What motivates her is an enigma to me,
And the mental distance between us makes me feel even more alone,
Despite being surrounded by so many people.

Even the intelligent-looking elderly man opposite me makes me feel alone,
For a moment I think I glimpse a glint of recognition of another thoughtful soul,
He glances at my pen and notepad and gives me a meaningful look,
But then he takes out a smartphone and begins to play with it.

I stand,
Disgusted,
And go to the bathroom.

At the urinal,
Taking a piss with the others,
I realise we all have more in common than we are different.

But soon this moment is over,
And I am back in my mental world,
Where my mind is so different,
Even if our bodies are similar.

***

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