Amazing

It is amazing
How quickly distance
May be closed.

Ten thousand yards
May be reduced
In seconds.

A dozen years
May be resolved
In one embrace.

The mathematics of life
Are circumstantial.
Our arithmetic is porous.

Darling
You are far
From me.

Yet you might find
Lost intimacy
With the flash of your eye.

You may find me
Where you left me.
I never moved.

My arms
My heart
My love is near.

It is amazing
How quickly distance
May be closed.

Sometimes

Sometimes
The universe seems to pause
I the only one moving
Seeing
Thinking.

Sometimes
I am the only breathing
Soul
The only
Sentient being.

Sometimes
I weep
Not for the universe
Not for the world
Not for you.

Sometimes
I weep selfishly
And am afterward
Ashamed .
But I must be honest.

Sometimes
I weep for myself.

Right?

Powerful pain killers
Surge my bloodstream
Numbing me
Rescinding the intense burn
Searing every extremity.

I am a castaway
A fugitive
A survivor
A man doomed and destined.

Chambers of horror
Vivid in detail
Slam shut in my brain
And I achieve cruising altitude
That rare place
Where nothing matters.

That knife blade before my eyes
Was never there.
Those bullets inches from my brain
Never sang their tenor song.
Her nightly screams
Her incantations of
Go to hell
Never scalded me.
That gaping maw of the shotgun
Never centered on my heart.
The tip of that iron in my shoulder
Never felled me.
That Crown Vic never crushed my ribs.

Three Oxycontin
And everything lethal melts away
Like April snow.
Three little white pills
And life settles into cruising speed.
Then three more
To maintain altitude.

I am not an addict.
I have a prescription.
That makes it all legal.
All okay.
Right?

Besides
The pain is real.
The emotional release
Is just an incidental benefit.
Isn’t it?

Aw, hell.
It doesn’t matter.
That was another life
When I was a younger man.
Maybe it never
Really
Happened.

Right?

A bullet is a few grams weight.
A knife is silent and passive.
A shotgun shell is simply bird shot.
A Crown Vic is just a car.
An iron is merely a household instrument.
Go to hell is just an epitaph.

Nothing means nothing.
Right?

Not even little white pills.

The Children in Room 3

They are no longer human.
They are now things
Called “Remains.”

An hour earlier
They were children.
They laughed and joked
Talking of who would be at the dance.
They were in the moment
Fully alive
Happy
Filled with expectation.

Now they are zipped in body bags
In Room 3.
They are things.

In Room 2
A human sits on an examination table
Where a silent doctor stitches his forehead.
The human drunkenly complains
Of the sting in the procedure
Complains of the harsh light
Complains he cannot leave
Complains he cannot get a drink.

In minutes frantic parents will arrive
And be escorted
Into Room 1
Where I will tell them
A drunk driver murdered their children.
They will ask questions parents always ask.
Am I sure it’s their child?
Where are they now?
Am I sure?
Am I sure?

In Room 2 the human howls at the stitches.

Yes
I am sure their children died instantly upon impact.
I am sure their bodies were charred in the resulting fire.
I am sure because I forced myself to view their remains
Though I will not tell them that
For fear they will want to see, too.
They must not see that.
No parent must see that.
I know.
I am a parent.

The human in Room 2
Should have been the one to die.
But he did not.
He will have a future.

The children in Room 3
Only have a past.