Goodbye, 2012

Goodbye, 2012

Flipping a page

And leaving the past behind...

Happy New Year!!!

Regret

Regret

Quiet whispers haunt my restless dreams,

A familiar voice; pained, weeping,

Crying her shaking sorrow into the darkness…

“You should have known better…

You should have done right by me.”

I toss and I turn and I punch my insolent pillow

While no peace finds me there.

I’m staring into the abysmal nighttime mirror,

Lost to the face of the one I’d betrayed.

I broke her heart

More effectively than a bowling ball

Carelessly thrown through a window pane,

And as I see the tearful hate in her eyes,

I know there’s no going back…

I could have been a better man…

I should have been a better me.

The honeyed words she once spoke to me;

The tender sparkle in her smile…

Gone… all gone… in my unforgivable cowardess;

My cruel ploy, reeking of fear and doomed to fail.

What have I really gained… what have I lost…

What have I done?

The Chanteuse

Chanteuse

Awash in the dim light of fading red candles,

I sat ‘round the rickety table,

Dizzy from the thick aroma of stale whiskey

Caked on the walls of the dingy speakeasy.

“Bum-buh-Bum-Bum” thumped from a towering upright bass

To the percussive “CRASH-BOOM-BOOM-CRASH-CRASH,”

Accompanying the jangling ebony and ivory “Chunk-a-Chunk”

That shook the audience from their shimmying stools.

But I only had ears for her… the chanteuse.

Her soulfully raspy voice, full of enchanted possibilities,

Electrified the midnight hour;

Delicately vulnerable… powerfully commanding.

I listened raptly… in love from the very first note.

Her trembling timbre rocked me;

Her quavering moans of passionate longing

Sent shivers through my hungrily stirring soul.

Our eyes met for an infinitesimal heartbeat

And I dreamt a little dream;

We both were alone in that smoky club

And she sung her serenades just for me.

The Drive Home

The Drive Home

 “CLAIRE!”

I woke up in a veritable maze of tall grass but had no idea how I got there… at first. It was late in an October evening and the falling temperature pierced my every nerve as though a cloud of ice was seeping through my pores. I could see no hint of the city’s luminescent aura to guide me toward civilization and the thickly expanding mist hung eerily heavy upon the ground, making me feel completely alone. But I wasn’t alone out there.

“CLAIRE! WHERE ARE YOU?”

I started remembering a road; I knew it was out there somewhere as surely as I knew my wife was concealed within the surrounding darkness. We had gone to a wine tasting party in the country and were driving home, dizzied by drink and laughing like fools. Claire unbuckled her seatbelt to take off her coat… she felt hot. And then she started to play the wily tease, unbuttoning the top buttons of her blouse in a clumsy attempt to be seductive. It was working; the car suddenly felt warmer to me, too, as my eyes locked onto the wisps of burgundy lace peeking out from behind her gray satin top.

            “ADAM!” Claire suddenly shrieked.

            The deer might have come out of nowhere; I wouldn’t know… I wasn’t looking. I jerked the wheel and the world became a sudden merry-go-round as the car had spun sideways off the embankment. We crashed and banged and twisted around like laundry in a demonically violent dryer. I became dizzy; disoriented as our ghostly headlight beams swirled with blurring rapidity in the darkness just before they were abruptly extinguished, and then there I was… lying in the grass.

“CLAIRE!”

Where could she have been? Why didn’t she answer me? The silence felt more terrible to me than if Claire’s bloodcurdling screams had suddenly pierced the inky veil. I was going blind with panic; the dread that I might not find her, and I didn’t know what I would do if that happened.

“Adam…”

I heard her voice. It was a whisper, but I heard it and I raced to meet it as fast as my legs could take me. The brush disappeared before me and I soon looked upon a ditch at the side of the road. Next to a splintered and crumpled fence post, I found the demolished remnants of the car; upended… cold… as dead as the hand that stretched limply out from under it. It couldn’t be; it just couldn’t be… Claire’s lifeless form was sandwiched between the car and the earth.

I fell to my knees, a devastated sudden widower. She had spoken to me; I was certain beyond any doubt. I reached out with trembling fingers to confirm her body was real, but stopped with a jolt when I noticed that Claire wasn’t alone in our car. There I was, still strapped to the driver’s seat and just as broken and dead as Claire. I barely had a second to comprehend the insanity when a hand gently pressed against my shoulder.

I turned and found Claire’s peaceful face smiling down at me. It was completely impossible. She was broken and withering in our obliterated car; we both were, and yet she stood before me without a care in the world. I had so many questions for her; so many things I wanted to say but as I opened my mouth to speak, she softly shushed me with a finger pressed against my lips.

 “Everything will be alright…” she whispered; “let’s go home.”

Rejection Letter (aka: The Story of My Life)

Rejection Letter (aka: The Story of My Life)

Deny, deny, deny;

The topic of my reply.

I guess you’ll have to retry...

You wanna know why I deny?

Listen and I’ll tell you why…

 ‘Cause fuck it… that’s why;

Go off in the corner and cry,

While I deny, deny.