Intervention

We put her in the ground today.
It was her destination all along.
Dictated by rebellion, determined by desire.
never realized or fully rendered.
Assisted by the belief in her own invincibility.
Convinced of immortality by her reckless pleasure
with no immediate consequence.
And peers who cheered her on and gave her validation.
While she herself bore the scars and wounds
of those less daring and free.
She bled for the sins of all who witnessed her glorious decline.
Her inevitable demise.
Her happy death.
Those who watched and smiled.
And did nothing...
Nothing to lift her up.

And what were we to do?
Those of us who stood above her today
The cowardly disciples of her self destruction.
Those of us who cry and ache and suffer her departure.
We stand  today with blood dripping from our hands
while crimson pools form at our feet.

My One True Love

When she is gone
then will I cling to you
I will turn to you
and fall apart
And crumble into nothing
Yours to reassemble
Yours to redefine

I will come to you for comfort
And hold you as I held her
I will call her name as I look into your eyes
and beg for your forgiveness of that sin.
Each kiss upon your mouth will be a Judas kiss
With each clutched hand and every passionate embrace
your sense of self will wane, as you become my consolation.

I will drain the life from you, solely selfish sustenance.
All for the sake of another, who you will never be
And wish above all else that you were somehow her
She who stood alone and loved without condition.
For all those things she was to me
You then will take her place
And I will be your newborn child.

Your breath across my neck
recalls her tender touch.
Recalls her sweet perfection in a world too far beneath her.
Your words ring so familiar, still remind me of the lips
from whence they first were spoken.
You will assume that thankless task of washing her away.
while striving to be what she once was.

I am the more to blame for never letting go.
More than you who settles for what is left behind.
Of me and my devotion to a memory just removed..
Acknowledged in advance the sacrifice you make
It is more than I should ask
of a faithful proxy...of a silent surrogate
of my  new and one true love

His War With God

His war with God began that day
when the thing he loved the most was taken
without reason, without purpose
his faith in the Invisible compromised
his pact of allegiance tested beyond its limits
A battle cry of anguish
from a loss too great to bear

There would be no deliverance from a heartless Universe
And there would be no forgiveness
from a servant so thoughtlessly betrayed
His God had drawn the line of loyalty
and love...and in that moment
a new enemy was born with hatred and resentment
of a God who went too far

 Unrelenting sorrow laid upon his shoulders
haunted by young laughter now committed to the grave
echoes of a life so pure and new
innocence extinguished
and snatched from loving arms
a sinless child struck down
by his God who looked away

Now bent on retribution
retaliation in kind
A holy war designed
against His fond creation
a loaded weapon filled with grief and pain
pointed at the head of God
recipient of undeserved adoration

The question oft considered
why pain is heaped upon the head of good men
and mindful servants
to break them , to test them
the answer was too simple
There was no God to blame
All then becomes so clear

His failure to intercede was due to nonexistence
 excuses insufficient for some elaborate design
 a figment of imagination from a being in denial
All misery and darkness must be carried on his own
God's everlasting silence is God's judgment of each man
In the mirror lies salvation, his weapon misdirected
and now turned the other way

A Crooked Tree

I visited the spot where we first met and fell in love.
I noticed that the tree there had grown much larger.
An annoying observation. A crooked tree so large.
Returning even later I resolved to cut it down.
And with an axe I did so.
providing temporary solace.

Gathering the remnants of the trunk and limbs
I carted them away to my backyard.
And whittled them into manageable pieces
placing them together and then lighting a match.
The fire burned for hours leaving only charred remains
and smoke that drifted in the air and burning my eyes.

Later in the week I happened by the spot once more
expecting only modest evidence of my crime.
Instead I met with utter disbelief the self same tree.
The crooked tree renewed. Larger than before.
Its branches and canopy almost filling the sky
stretching out its healthy bough
brushing my face as I surveyed the massive wonder.

I will cut it down again today and as before tend the burning embers.
the cremated corpse of such a large and crooked tree
And as I leave to retrieve my axe, a thought occurs to me.
I will cut it down today...and probably tomorrow...and the day after that.

To Vanish

I am fading from the world
and walking through it's walls
smashing into pieces the windows of heaven.
washing the earth from my feet.
gazing up into the clear and starry blue
to cross the bridge of doon.

counting down the seconds and the minutes
of what used to be.
floating
where memory and reunion collide
music falls to silence having lost it's power
falling and passing through the floorboards
bringing down the house of psychedelia

shedding love and hate
doubt and certainty
forgetting joy and regret
uniting with the air to vanish
when all of reality slips away
and finally
there is only me.

Chloe

What started as a typical Fall celebratory outing for a church youth group in Lacombe, Louisiana ended as a tragic mystery fifteen years ago that still today baffles local authorities and townspeople. On a farm in nearby Hickory where families and groups go to experience walking through cornfields and picking their own pumpkins straight from the patch, 14 year old Chloe Chandler entered the popular Corn Maze attraction with 4 other teens that Saturday night but she never came out.
As a rule corn mazes are considered harmless Halloween fun, certainly in the light of day but many groups turn out in the hundreds for the extra scare of the night time walk through this particular maze that features walls of intimidating cornstalks seven feet or more in height. Navigating through the maze can be a frustrating proposition especially in the dark, armed with only a flashlight and the shaky support of equally confused companions. Some maze walkers have admitted to being stuck inside for an hour or more before asking for help from a staff guide. Certainly it is still considered the less frightening alternative to another Halloween tradition... the haunted house. It was a choice that Chloe and those with her had made, never knowing that it would end in tragedy. Upon realizing that Chloe was missing from the group, farm employees performed a search of the grounds but came up empty-handed. Church group chaperones panicked. The search soon escalated into a police search and subsequent investigation. As is common in this type situation, authorities suspected foul play even hinting at kidnapping for the intention of rape by a deranged sexual predator. The less sensational possibility of a teenage runaway scenario was dismissed after interviewing Chloe's friends and family. She had never been one to exhibit strange or odd behavior and for all appearances seem to be a normal teen.
So what happened to the previously unremarkable Chloe Chandler? No one really knows for sure but the aftermath of the event is the truly chilling element of this story.
On the first anniversary of her disappearance night-time maze walkers first reported seeing an apparition resembling the form of a young girl following them or in some cases seemingly trying to show them the way out. The descriptions from various encounters are consistent in details even down to the girl's pale features and ghostly clothing. Most people dismissed these reports at first claiming they were concocted by attention seekers, but every year on the anniversary of Chloe Chandler's disappearance similar encounters were reported by night time visitors. The farm owners had no explanation and deny even now of perpetrating some kind of publicity hoax.
The corn maze in Hickory no longer exists. Hurricane Katrina destroyed it in 2005 along with all of the pumpkin patches that were so popular on the farm. Although the farm and pumpkin patches did eventually come back from the destruction in recent years, the maze has never been restored. What remains of the story is an odd epilogue of sorts. Townspeople still wonder what happened to Chloe but assume she is dead due to the other stories surrounding her vanishing. Today the farm owners reluctantly admit to sightings of an apparition of a young girl in the remaining pumpkin patches adjacent to the field where the corn maze once existed. Looking out of their farm house windows they can see it slowly walking down the rows alternately vanishing and reappearing as if its struggling to keep form. Additionally they report that there is a noticeable and observable effect on the pumpkins that she walks near on her night strolls through the patches. In the mornings after these sightings, upon inspection, the perfectly good pumpkins from the previous day would be over ripe and rotting showing signs of mold and blistered decay. When pressed for an explanation the farm owners speculate that if the corn maze was somehow able to "take" Chloe ( a possibility they shy away from accepting) then perhaps her spirit was able to escape when it was destroyed and only remains because she cannot accept what happened to her... a young melancholy spirit still grieving her own death and spilling out that grief on to the fields of a farm in Hickory, Louisiana. What happened to Chloe Chandler was never repeated as far as anyone knows but her story remains on the back burner of local memory and it serves as a reminder of how things in the dark deserve our respect and that our fear may well be justified.

Through The Past Darkly

Before attending the class reunion I sought out the advice from an old friend who attended her own reunion last year for Salmen High in Slidell. Her only sage advice was this..."keep smiling and most importantly don't forget your reading glasses." As it turns out...excellent advice. With a few exceptions most old friends bear no resemblance to their previous selves and the name tag becomes the only clue as to who they are. The years do change things,
If you're like me you spent the hours previous to the reunion revisiting old haunts in a town that is hardly recognizable through old eyes. The houses where I used to live...still there but somehow indifferent to my existence. The school playgrounds where we built straw houses, the courtyards where we talked, the stadium walls that we scaled and walked...all changed or completely razed for the sake of some newer enterprise. Hmm...a depressing reality. Time stands still for no man. Elvis has left the building and he's not coming back. It's left to us individually to reconstruct that old reality from our own memory and keep it alive. The new reality however is so insistent on being acknowledged. One has to close their eyes and fall into a sleep and carefully navigate the dreamscape that once existed.
Reunions hardly seem necessary these days with so many ways to stay in touch and reminisce. Camelot and Brigadoon. It has to go away so it can come back. That's the essence of reunion.
People who know me... I mean really know me... understood what returning to Slidell meant to me last weekend and why it was particularly important where the event took place. This reunion not only took me back to graduation but back to the very place where I first felt love for another human being, and her house was where beauty dwelt. It is foolish I know but seeing that one person in that house after so many years still made my heart beat faster. Yes...foolish.