I love it when someone’s thrown into the scene
Like a motorcyclist hitting a woman picking up her children from school
And before she can **** her head back to ask
How was school or
What did you learn today
There’s a helmet crashing through the windshield at 70 mph
Then the swerves and the tire tracks
And the screams and the noise
Everyone get up
Brush yourself off
And ask if everyone’s alright
But the motorcyclist is pronounced dead on the scene
BAC 0.22
And the mother will have to take counseling
Where she’ll start an affair with her shrink
To escape the boredom of suburban life
And the kids will think it’s cool but won’t realize
The whole affair will inspire one to write
Award winning novels
And drive the other into an early suicide
When someone’s caught off guard like that
I can’t help but to smile at
The helplessness and the look on their face
It’s the eyes
The same kind of look the mother has when her
Husband comes home early only to find her
Riding Dr. So-and-so in the same bed her
Two boys were conceived
Later the dad will say to his boys
It’s not your fault
And one will cry like a little girl
And the other will call his brother a little girl
Though in the middle of the night
He will wear the same face his mother wore
When she cocked her head back and saw
The man wearing the half undone tie she bought two Christmases ago
This man is in fact the keeper of some nuptial vows
She can still recite to this day
Expressive redux when she does a double take
And stares at the wedding ring on the hand
Still clutching the doorknob
We embrace order and schedules
But we need that spontaneity
That spark
That everlasting feeling that
We aren’t just cosmic specks against
A grumpy god
Deep down we all have that felling somewhere
That sense of small
The feeling the brother gets as he
Dots his i’s and crosses his t’s
On the suicide letter
But even deeper is the tickle in the back of the skull
Felt right before the rope or belt or Christmas lights or electrical chord
Goes taut
The feeling he is wrong and with it floods the realization
Of meaning in the absence of a reset button