She Was Never The Crash Victim
After the crash,
there was no going back into her body.
Her nose was broken,
head split open,
spine crushed,
one arm half-torn from elbow.
Nothing looked familiar.
"Get her out of there!" someone shouted.
But she was long gone.
Her father identified the body.
His breakdown said it all.
"Yes, that's her."
He never did know his own daughter.
More than remembering the color
of her hair a month ago,
surely he knew
her nose was fine, her head together,
her spine straight and firm,
her arms supremely attached and swinging.
At the funeral home,
the casket was closed.
At least, no one would make
the same mistake her old man did.
They just wept.
Friends, family, co-workers,
even the attendants in their dark suits.
Then they buried the coffin...
just for the sake of burying something.
Drunken
You staggered
down the sidewalk,
were almost hit
by a car as you
tried to cross the street.
Then you ducked into
an alley to relieve yourself.
And you began to sing
the cracked melodies
of Old Granddad.
You'd be home
eventually
and I would hear you
fall through the front door,
lurch and gobble
up the stairs.
But it was a cop
who stopped you that night,
who listened to your bleating,
who dragged you to the cell
to dry off until morning.
He booked you,
he lectured you
and he tossed you
into some hell-hole
where you really did belong.
So I got the gift of silence
that night.
And I got the penalty
of guilt and uselessness
for being a boy
and not that cop.
Disturbance, 2.00 AM
friend calls
says he and his woman
had a fight,
she walked out on him,
asks for my advice
it's two in the morning,
he's woken me from
a deep sleep,
my wife also
I tell him to take a sleeping pill
or a nice hot bath,
pour himself
a glass of wine
or listen to some jazz
I throw out
twenty or more suggestions
all of which I'm sure
won't work
of course
the smartest thing he could do
is call a friend,
wake him up,
disturb his woman
talk to someone
now equally at odds
with his loved one
but he knows
that already
The 70'S Strangler
No one says anything out aloud.
The fate of two innocent girls
throttled by a crazy man
can only be whispered.
People stay with light,
cling to company but
even then they tremble.
They're all waiting for
someone to break down
and cry, "The strangler will
get you if you don't watch out."
They can all laugh then.
But that's a long time yet.
Reality needs to ferment into legend.
The cops arrest some guy - a tramp,
a stranger. He gets life in jail.
And thirty years into the future.
Early Morning, Northern Woods
He's up at dawn, shower, shave,
half a cup of coffee,
then on the road in blinding fog.
Past the lake, the cabins,
he slows, thinks he saw something
big as a truck, off there in the woods,
and rumbling toward him.
His whole body trembles.
Everything on all sides
is on that nervous cusp of invisible.
It's there. Then it's not.
It appears. It disappears.
That's when the sounds take over.
That's when his journey capitulates.
Suddenly, a giant moose bounds
across the ghostly highway
ten feet or so ahead of him,
crashes into the brush on the other side.
His heart struggles to breathe.
His lungs try to beat.
I could have been killed, he tells himself.
as he drives on.
He's up at dawn, shower, shave,
half a cup of coffee,
then out there where the dice keep rolling.
