Perspective

Snared in sleeplessness, I contemplate

What worlds may exist in the center of a pebble

What poetry burns in the heart of an ant

I wonder what events transpire

In the fog surrounding an atom

And if this world and all its wars and dynasties are

so large after all.

Our sun, and the immeasurable stretch of black space

The twisted starfish of our galaxy

May be a speck of dust on some greater face

To be washed away by

a stray drop of rain

Or a fugitive tear.

Terrible Masterpiece

These are lyrics to a song I’m working on.

I met a woman on an evening just like this she told me

Love is a pistol that you load with every kiss she told me

Love is a pistol that you load with every kiss and it’s

Just a matter of time before someone pulls the trigger

Met a man who told me love’s a beautiful balloon

and it’s gradually inflating in a porcupine filled room he told me

such a colorful, such a beautiful balloon

but you know what happens if it gets too much bigger

Seafood and Bloodlust

Samantha crushed her half-lemon with barbaric intensity, feeling the juice empty from the thousands of ruptured chambers within the fruit. She was not watching as the fresh, fragrant acid gushed over her broiled fish. Her eyes were fixed hatefully on the waitress flirting with Andrew at the other end of the restaurant.

A lifetime in polite and civilized society had manacled Samantha irrevocably. She was not capable of carrying out the murderous uses she was envisioning for her salad fork. She could only smolder and fidget. When the waitress sensed the malicious energy that was focused like a laser at her perfect french twist and turned, Samantha redirected her gaze instantaneously, glaring so vehemently at the salt and pepper shakers that had anyone asked for the seasonings at that moment they would have been hot to the touch.

Cemetery Thoughts

She drove past the cemetery almost daily, now that the boys’ swim team practiced at the YMCA instead of at the Country Club. It was a part of town she wasn’t used to, but soon she’d know each bump and pothole as she made the drive back and forth four times a day taking them to and from their two-a-days.

She always noticed the green tents above fresh graves. The ones overflowing with mourners were sad, but the empty ones were almost devastating. The freshly dug hole waiting. Or the freshly buried body, already alone. Somehow the empty tents made her ache: A quick stab to the heart, and a dull throb in the empty spot in her belly.

The other thing she always noticed during the drive through this different part of town was how much it reminded her of her childhood home. No sidewalks or even curbs, so the grass grew right up over the lip of the street; small, tired houses alternately faded or freshly painted; overgrown yards hemmed by chain link fences – if hemmed at all. One day driving past, her son asked why people would even have “those metal fences.” In their part of town each measured square was defined by eight foot wooden privacy fences. Probably the chain link is cheaper than privacy fences, she mused. And her son wondered if maybe here people didn’t feel such a need to hide.

Another day, on the way home past the cemetery, her son mentioned that his friend from school had said that his grandparents were buried in that cemetery there. For a quick moment she envied him. A life led in one town where you could bury those you love near enough to visit. Her own father was buried many hundreds of miles away, close to her mother. But in later years, when she lay next to him, who would visit the two of them? She pushed the thought aside, but not before her hand slipped unconsciously to her flat lower belly.

If she could have been conscious of her chain of thoughts instead of hiding them away, burying them so deep, she would know that they shouldn’t be connected. Empty funeral tents and unvisited graves had nothing to do with the miscarried baby. A baby too tiny for a burial. Driving fast, she hit a large pothole hard, at the same time as she felt the familiar squeeze of her heart but by then she couldn’t remember why she was suddenly so sad.