the fallen

the second lines don’t come as easily anymore

the beautiful symmetry that i reveled in is gone

the effortless flow of thoughts and rhyme has begun to fade

as an immense sense of loneliness pervades

my being

i’m surrounded by people whose names

i don’t know. bustling multitudes that claim

the space around me as theirs. millions who walk and sleep

and go to work as i watch from the sidelines and keep

silent because i’m on the outside now

i've fallen through the gaps. conversations make no sense
because the very premises of our disparate existence are discordant
and since i'm the minority it leaves me burdened by a rationality i can't defend
their condescendingly smug lives are an indecipherable farce and all i'm left with
is this disjointed sense of debilitating incoherence

i've slipped through the cracks. i'm a wandering mendicant 

depending on the kind words of strangers to keep me going

that they give away in charity like old moth-eaten blankets when it starts snowing

and i sometimes wonder if i was like them once with my life sorted out and therefore vain

enough to say a kind word or two that could’ve kept some misfit from going insane
maybe just a nod of the head, or a simple smile feigned out of pity
or out of misplaced sympathy for a misfit like me