These are the facts, nothing here but the facts. I was on the road to Damascus via a street in the West Village in New York City, when, in an instant, barometric pressure had dropped 100 MB. Darkness enveloped an eleven-o’clock-morning sun. It may have been a trick of the mind, or some kind of serious panic disorder. Although I could no longer see, I pictured myself a child on a visit to my great grandmother's house in La Salle, Illinois. In my head I felt as though a tornado was approaching...
*He was convicted of the assassination
of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.. He confessed to the
crime and passed on a jury trial. A habitual criminal, Ray was
sentenced to 99 years in prison. Later he recanted his confession and
unsuccessfully tried to gain a trial. He died in prison in 1998.
It
was you who once said that you felt like an open flower.
When
I remembered your remark, I thought it strange that it should come
to mind, Considering how many of the names of good friends From
those past times I now have already forgotten.
I can still
envision us walking off into the field, And me leaning up against
the side of the tall Sycamore, While we talked those nights during
our one summer together.
The last time I saw you was nearly a
decade ago.
There are doors which I have shut forever. Books
in my library I shall never reopen. Mirrors which will not reflect
my image ever again.
Well, well, well! It won’t
be long now, Our love, how it plays its final story, Like all
else belonging to world’s glory, Soon ends and will be no
more.
Perhaps we never meet again. We learn the awful ache,
What separation means, When time runs out, and we see It’s
too late to mend a heart, A heart which has been rendered, torn
apart.
Right now I feel it’s true, We shall never meet
again, while Yet we remain this side of heaven, while We still
abide on earth’s shore of the river.
Strange, yeah, how
fragile my hope (Really quite ridiculous!) That you stop it
with your forked tongue, Abandon your bad habit, and
proclaim,
Just admit it; you broke the deal! And, as for
me, you know the story, Surrender, otherwise, forget it.
Just
tell all, say to one and all, I am gone, you’ve done me wrong. I
swear, I don’t care, I don’t care. I am gone, gone, gone,
gone!
The hurt is bad, real bad. I am through with you in
my face.
Remember the time when I begged, Had to implore,
time after time, and again. Truth be known, it was an easy
request; I wanted a few month’s itinerary.
You pretended
not to know the meaning, You pretended not to know
the meaning of the common, English word, itinerary.
And
when you had finally succumbed to my beseeching,
And
sent me your plans, you fabricated a calender,
None of the timings proved true.
Awful,
actually very sad, After all the time we had spent
together, Treachery, simplest poetic conceit sums it, It was
game; you played me. You had a pack of lies.
I’ve had
it! I’m really gone! Moved on, Because you have done me wrong!
It
had been already opened and part drunk. Then she made an
off-handed remark Claiming to have no communicable disease.
How
was she to know that he required No reassurance, that in fact he
was eager to seek A place where his lips might alight upon hers?
He drank down the rest of the soda in a couple gulps.
Our
generals had failed to figure on all-out assault.
An
awful panic ensued.
I
had not the time to grab my boots.
I
ran across the Sinai.
I
hoped to survive and make it home.
Though
still early morning, yet the sand was hot.
Before
too long my feet were sorely burned.
Snipers
hid among the rocks and hills;
They
shot and killed us, almost everyone.
Thank
you Bacchus. You let me go,
Freed
me from your treacherous hold.
I
crossed the Nile and my injuries healed,
From
death in the desert, abandoned and alone,
Your
grace had saved me.
Now
I share this marvelous tale;
The
troops in rout and I had prevailed.
*Bacchus is the Roman god of wine; he
has a number of darker associations, one of them is the disorder
apparent when an army suffers a calamitous defeat.
Oh what a wicked, wicked world we all inhabit! How many the snares which are set to trap us. Too, we must remember that the Ecuadorian Embassies world-wide are usually very small and are unlikely to provide we ordinary humans refuge from the storm, alas!
