BLESSINGS

 

Dear Lord, please send a body to occupy, as mine has seen troubling times. I do not require anything luxurious. I would be fine with practical… Inconspicuous, is okay. 

Hell, anything this side of uninhabitable, would be considered a luxury. 

My shell is cracked, my bones are wracked, and I just can’t go on. 
Oh, I know I shouldn’t, but what can I do?…crawl to the curtains just to pull myself up? I can’t do that. 

And the sirens? Are they passing or coming here?…for who?

Oh, hell’s-bells, let it be me, just this once, I promise you…if they could stop, just this one time? 

It would be a blessing.

V

LOCKED DOWN

Avril Tennet went out of his way to be a good neighbor. He was casual and cordial, never cut any corners when it came to welcoming neighbors. Then, too, he offered people their privacy. A neighbor should feel safe in their solitude, and he respected that. His obsession was simply their safety.

Don’t remember which came first…patrols, or Dorothy leaving? I believe it was  the former. Come to think of it, she threw up a big stink about it...so, yes, the patrols came first. I never took them serious, not at first, but the responsibility grows upon a man…it mounts him…and before you know it, you’re ‘covering nights’, stretching the hours, making double sure it’s locked down. Sometimes it called for going out in the dead of night, ‘cause a guy can’t sleep until he knows his neighbors are safe. It happens. Sneaks up on you.

Since Dorothy left, taking ‘Binks’ with her…don’t…let’s not get into that…well, it’s been very quiet around the house. Four years now, and nothing has changed. Nothing.

Table is still set…

So, it’s good to get out and take some pride in the neighborhood, smell the desert air, fresh with winter.

With winter your breath is vaporous, your body steams with the heat it emits. Frost is in the air, and, Neighbors tend to huddle inside, all cozy and nice…

Precisely where he liked them.

V

ON THE DIME

 

It wasn’t the height of despair, it was the depth.

And yet, what silly giddiness arises from the bludgeoning? 

Take the blow, take a bow, madness prevails, if not for the pain.

The pain you bear so painlessly, pleasurably caressing each crushing punch...

Salute.

Take’s one, on Take-One, to nail it every time,

and you, my friend…even as the nails shred,

have nailed it on the Dime!

Hasn’t always been that way. Then, you blamed ‘the other party’ for your transgressions. And it’s been a millennium ago, but still fresh in the mind…it’s mind over matter…matters of heart, broken to taters.

Where’s the shame, who’s to blame,

and, is there life hereafter? 

V