Don't waste perfectly good loneliness.

Don't waste it on the wrong person.
Don't even waste it on the right person.

Don't waste loneliness during the day,
When there are things to be done.
Don't waste it in dreams at twilight,
When there are dones to be thinged.

Don't waste loneliness at night
When your time should be your own
And could be filled with anything
Other than everything you're not.

Take your loneliness
And denigrate it.
Crumple it. Crush it.
Throw it in a blender.
An industrial oven.

Take it out
For a few drinks too many,
And a few more after that;
Lull it into a false sense of security
That congeals with its drunken state
To create a blinding dichotomy
Of vulnerability and arrogant invincibility,
So it suspects nothing
As you lead it
Down a dark alley
And beat it to death with a brick.

Have a too-close-to-call
Fight to the death
With your loneliness
In a public toilet,
With it almost getting
The better of you
Until you smash it
Teeth-first
Off of a porcelain
Sink basin,
Before dragging it
By the hair
To a cubicle,
Where you hold its head
Under the toilet water,
Long after its body stops convulsing.

Do what you can
To transmute
Your loneliness
Into solitude,
And wear it.

Inside-out.
Back to front.
Upside-down.
Right side up.

Wear solitude so well that
It ends up wearing you,
As its skin.

Use solitude to learn thyself.
To feel thyself.
To know thy changing self.

Let solitude remind you that
The existence of loneliness
Begets the existence of
The antithesis of loneliness.

So definitely don't waste
Perfectly good loneliness,
Especially if you're forgoing
Perfectly good hope.