Pulsating track lights.
Resonation.
Sunlight trickling down my neck as it set,
following the same pattern as your fingertips
that afternoon in your kitchen,
dripping like morning sweat.
When there was nothing left to say,
we filled the silences.

I adored your friends before I knew you,
yet my gaze drifted
to your shadow
as you stood behind a sheer black curtain;

no bigger than a toy soldier in my periphery
but I'd already memorised your shape.
I'd know you anywhere.

Sixteen thousand other people saw you,
but none like me.
She asked why I was blushing.

I had no explanation for the way my heart raced
as I remembered whose body I would sleep next to that night.
There you were,
in my sightline,
and yet I ached for you.

I stand convicted of emptiness.
I claim no pardon,  no accomplice,  no alibi.
I am executed slowly.

My Reason has judged me guilty:
of searching for love and finding hate;
of searching for peace and finding turmoil;
of searching for truth and finding lies;
of searching for comfort and finding pain.

I am condemned to the agonizing maze of crowded loneliness
rushing headlong into oblivion-
There will be no reprieve.

Time is my executioner-
he taunts me with fleeting ideas and hopeless hopes
as I crawl forward towards the noose,
haunted always by my destiny,
that dawns ever slowly.

C. B. was a son of a B!
Did anybody really like him?
Most of the people he encountered
Usually found more reasons to strike him.

In school the kids called him a bully.
Bully he was, and bully he did.
He derived inordinate pleasure
Tormenting any vulnerable kid.

His schoolyard behavior was no better
Than his disruptive behavior in class.
In fact, most teachers would call him
An incorrigible pain in the ***.

In high school he was just as aggressive.
His reputation was firmly upheld.
Holding a freshman's head in the toilet
Finally got the bully expelled.

How he earned money. Well, that was
A real mystery--through and through.
Not surprisingly his motto
Was "***** them before they ***** you."

What his girlfriend saw in him
Was truly anybody's guess.
Aware of his fractious personality,
The woman married him nevertheless.

People made bets on how long the couple
Could last in a stormy marriage from hell.
After the wife had had enough,
She packed up the kids and said farewell.

C. B. remained estranged
From both of his kids for the rest of his life.
Some woman out there was very lucky
For he never found another wife.

Money. That was all that mattered.
People? Employees? They were dispensable.
His dog was even afraid of him
And sensed that he was reprehensible.

He bought a number of businesses.
How they lasted was a surprise.
Frankly, most people suspected
Secret Mexican Mafia ties.

One day C. B.'s lifeless body
Was found in his driveway. The coroner said
A heart attack was the cause;
But some suspected foul play instead.

A gravestone reads: "Here lies C. B.
When life was hard, he would persist.
Survived by two loving children,
The doting father will be missed."

Whoever wrote that epitaph?
You wonder: what did he or she owe him?
The author of those unfounded words
Obviously didn't know him.

Oddly the deaths of louses and scoundrels
Are so hard to identify,
For based on gravestones and the obits,
It seems that only good people die.

- by Bob B (6-27-17)