She was driving to work that summer day and her mussed hair, her

Morning-after breath smelled of coffee.

Sleepy husband exchanged sloppy kisses and automatically,

doesn't think about it, who thinks about it?- since the day they exchanged rings at a ceremony

where everybody fell asleep in the pews.

"Love you dear, see you later"

never knowing that the strangely vague

said ambivalent "later"

would never materialize; come into being

if only they'd been blessed with the afterthought, the gift of all-seeing.

The warm sun dotes lovingly on strawberry blonde curls and

the radio plays those forgotten songs she danced to in high school in her gym socks

and she thinks about the life she has built up for herself- she, husband, arms-locked together

(Like the Polaroid from the honeymoon they kept face-down in the bedroom.)

In her twenty-odd years, the baby stirring/kicking inside of her

hackneyed family names they picked out and disagreed on night after forgettable night

this way, that one and a- that way and her due-date imminent in another two weeks.

It’s funny, of such things no one should speak.

Tongues are held, politely.

The impending motherhood awaiting her with open arms, a flowered field brimming with new life new joys to cross

and maybe if she hadn't been distracted by the distant ringing of her cell phone maybe if she pulled over and gone home,

maybe the blood-fierce blood-red blood-lusting

one-light-out-is-it-winking-at-her?

maybe the Buick would have come to a screechy stop

but the fates; they play different, fickle games.

One wrong turn and two worlds instantly intertwined, collided, joined forever at the hips and twisted metal by one defining one maelstrom of a moment.

II.

This is how it reads:

he is not a bad man. he is not a criminal, he no villain of film-noir-lore.

He is a simple, destroyed soul with impaired vision and two divorces under his belt (along with an unregistered gun)and that son that he hasn't seen since two Christmases ago in a photo.

He's driving too fast on his way to the only bar open in town that early,

He knows it (oh, Lord! he knows it)

but he's dealing cards with the devil and with a reckless scowl,

with all the swagger of the best-luck scoundrel--

he is not about to back down.

He is not a bad man but he is aggravated, he should have stopped at the sign,

his gnarled hands turning with too quick of a jerk,

as if he is MOSES and the asphalt sea should dare to part for him.

and he sees that car coming so fast up from behind

that he doesn't know what it is!

If it's even a car or some malevolent spirit,

some destructive angel sent by Satan with glowing orbs and a distinguished metal snarl

a titan locked out from under the earth come to seek its due, the carnage that’s unjustly his

& he knows in the fractured hare of a second this has got to be it

The sinking doom in the pit of his stomach on the edge of his seat, for nary a second

-- maybe even sees the woman's sudden all-knowing fear encompassing her sapphire blue eyes,

(as she thinks of ritualistic church ceremonies and subconscious lullabies.)

He cannot stop, he cannot do a damned thing as hard as he tries and

and

and

his wasted life (a bad movie he cannot escape the seat no matter how vehemently he disputes spitting to the chiseled familiar actor- it’s all been misunderstood!)

FLASHES before him in the final cataclysmic moment of total impact, death and destruction.

The bloodbath is intolerable. (the first-responders will gasp and recoil and a young man two weeks into the job runs into the bushes to vomit all over his boots.)

III.

it is the moment

The boy tied to the fence stares at the unblinking stars and wonders when death

will come and kindly ride him away,

some gallant knight to take him into that closing night

with the blood mixed with the fresh saline on his face.

A boy who did nothing but live the only way he knew he was met to live, he did his best.

Others crushed him for not meeting their supposed standards of what qualifies as normal & the abdominal "is not”-

not a heart to be found in their chests.

it is the moment

The young starlet is yanked harshly to the floor in a heap with her dead friend who died in her name,

sees the wild-eyed girl, wielding the knife like a prize above her, and begs

for not her life but her unborn child's and it is all a losing battle.

It gives her a hereafter of the breed of fame

most attention gluttons spend years scheming up

but not the kind of fame anybody in the right frame would want to keep.

The calamity digs deep,

the whole house is eradicated, with an unthinkable brutality and a young boy with nothing on his mind but his god damned radio is gunned down in his car as 'collateral damage' and innocence ends

in the simmering august heat over the corpses of friends and people you’d never meet.

Hollywood nods at the killing; only in her death does the rising (but crashed, crashed, crashed) star get top billing.

IV.

It

all

came

down.

What you foolishly labeled as “indestructible” just because of what priests said when you were young

WHAT TEACHERS BEAT INTO YOUR BRAIN WHEN YOU WERE DUMB.

Merciless, merciless, to the tone-deaf seraphs we grumbled-

while

towers collapsed, fortresses crumbled,

subterfuges melt and houses burn long into the night

because nothing here is eternal or even offered that devastating promise.

And they all know that. They’ve heard it before- tonight, or any other night. They are skilled in disinterest at the implores.

You are in the world for but a moment, clinging to a grain of sand and caught within the motion of waves that you can’t understand

there is so much to live for, but never anything more-

another human being is proclaiming their destiny

in their callous and clammy, unstable hold and that destiny

is an untimely death as unseasonable as the cold that strikes midsummer

that the papers will write about for months. (People will use this paper to litter the boxes for their house pets- “no it’s too big of a bummer.”)

Like a virgin offering to a somber god, trembling with the fears of an unreachable immortality and the thoughtless actions of others come rising up as fast as embers,

dancing on the walls long after the flames have burnt out, unmistakable

Pan plays his flute and our response movement is continental, we act as it’s still May when really we’re trapped inside Decembers-

The fact that we need others, usually incidental.

To keep going you’re not slowing down to give yourself a fair looking-over and of the griefs found near your ankles in the mud of the world around.

More often than not you just keep going.

V.

Family members come down to the morgue and they are aware

as they grip their paper tissues and sob, as they are despondent and too numb to care

they are well aware but

still tenderly breastfeed any fantasies lingering in the backs of their delirious heads

(it's not her, it can't be her. i just saw her yesterday & she was

so. full. of. life.)

The sheet is pulled back,

the hopeful-hopeless husband looks up

and feebly whispers affirmation as if to admit defeat.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

He will not sleep in that house for a month and a half, the wedding pictures and never-used nursery only serve to mock him &

his continued existence.

the only hands that will ever touch his child, hold his child

are those of the man in red-stained surgical scrubs and the disposable gloves

Lost now are the only thing this man loves.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

And in the morning, no one saw this coming, in the morning at sunrise, it was every other fresh new morning

under the guise of gentle blue skies

from here to eternity.

BUT eternity is entirely too far away

and so, so incomprehensible to those who stand gawking.

VI.

Well, someone will clutch their children extra tight and extra close tonight.

Someone else will say a prayer and splash themselves devoutly with holy water

thinking of the unkempt grave of their lost mother.

People will bring fresh-cut bouquets from grocery store displaces, plastic crosses,

a much-needed sign of solace to a sight on the side of the road outside a convenience store and gas station, otherwise unknown on a regular map.

A bewildered manager stares blankly from the window (he was the first to see too much.)

Someone will cry from the depths of a lonely and broken soul for him, for her, for the child and everything that he held so precious that was lost so soon and senselessly.

Older people with not much time, not much time at all weep for a daughter

they'd like to have witnessed their first grandchild's baptism and first sports games and laudable piano recitals.

The other man was just part of a scene, another player, if anything a murderer and is a footnote, as if he never was brought into this life in the first place, a mistake two youthful lovers made one summer night.

And somewhere else

because there is always a “somewhere else”

other people will dance, sing, make love, fight, fuck, sweat

throw their fists in the air

and laugh as if nothing is wrong

because, to them, nothing IS wrong

which would seem unfair, but

it’s the learned right of everybody to just learn to play dumb, come on try and play along -

And-

someday we’ll forget, everyone will forget

(we all forget given the time and the condition right)-

Everyone but those with the permanent impressions burnt forever on their souls, the shadows captured by a nuclear twilight, whom will live on like nothing is wrong--

but are haunted by ghosts of things in past present and future

stuck in the constant grind and motion. Haunted by the faces of people they’ve never seen

(except when flashing momentarily on a fuzzy television screen.) Haunted by what was and could have been and footsteps only they seem to hear, visions that just disappear.

The public will lose its interest and the roadside memorials and talk show appearances and interviews

will fade

into more school shootings and more homicides and more car bombings and then they will slip into unconsciousness too.

For, again and again like a repetitive sweep of the hand back and forth, the aged and cynic world

halts for no one,

not even you.