A Haunting Memory

This piece is from (un)SPOKEN. It's been stuck in my head for a while now, as has my longing for another night... at the No Exit, or Heartland... Back on the North Side. For what it's worth, I hope you enjoy it.

Bohemian Parking Lot

With Lake Effect Snow

The acidic flavor of loss

Equal parts bile

And orange juice concentrate

The hazy outline

Of a conversation

With blinding noise

Providing the backing score

This is where the company parts

While the rain comes down

Like a million spears

Thrown by a tiny army of tribesman

Bent on the destruction

Of my temples, if not my soul

Awareness, I am alone

It slides upon me

Draped like a silk sheet

There’s a comfort there

However thin and less than insulating

It may be

The chill spills through me

One pint less and I could likely think

At least join one thought into the next

Without the abruptness

Of rough cutting reality

Inhale the blades of air, so cold

It’s frozen hair to my face in chunks

Adding weight to close my lips

I can smell the exhaust of the car

It’s gone but that’s still here

In the parking lot of Yabo’s favorite bar

This is where it happens

This is where I finally seize the day

Test the fragile bond of life

Throwing myself at its boundary full force

Tomorrow a new day dawns

With the dark heavy clouds

Likely still hanging thick over the L stop

I’ll rise, dress, and coffee myself

There may be enough ambition in me

To shave my face

And dress in worker’s clothes

Walking to my platform I’ll pass the scene

Of tonight’s miserable performance

Only the briefest of moment’s thought

Will be given over

Taken from my bagel and cigarette

The memory will be a haze

And not worth the effort to recall in full

I will force myself not to look into the window

Of the Evanston sandwich shop,

Where you worked

Nor will I look to my right as I pass by

That house where we met

Smoking on the porch over idle chatter

The kind only strangers make with other smokers

The whole of the time I’ve known you will be made

To vanish from my mind’s eye

I will tell myself this lie, until I can believe it

And then I will have died

Or the part of me I most admire will have

Buried under so many wrappers, cartons, and papers

In an alley refuse bin that smells of the rot

I will so keenly feel

But for now I will dwell

I die, as I imagine giving into

A frostbitten death by exposure

And paramedics trying to peel off

The ice solid layers that surround me

I die alone

Because I couldn’t stand to be alone

And so, have driven away those who

Truly matter most 



From (un)SPOKEN, by Dennis Sharpe
copyright 2010