By Al Meme
Date: 28 August 1997

untitled

   Standing in the street, the darkness having crawled about me 
as time passed us both by, and I watched the rain in the light 
of the streetlamp. A miniature meteor shower under the cover 
of rolling thunder and clouds that scraped the top of the atmosphere, 
making it bleed the tears from a watery moon. 
   At the far edge of the lamplight, was the darkness of an open 
manhole, roped off with danger signs and a drenched lead between 
four posts. It took in the falling rain and engulfed them in its 
shadows. They were buring silver metal one moment and tarnished, 
dull the next. Like shooting stars, they lived brief in the light 
of the lamp, making an appearance like on vaudeville. 
   I don't know why I was there. I don't remember. But the image 
of those rain drops stays here; flashing whenever I lower my lashes. 
Our lives are so much like that. So quick and then over. Do we have 
time to realize we forgot the parachute. Can we recognize the yawning 
mouth of oblivion as it streaches out and takes us into the empty space 
of death? Because I think it has to be more than that. 
   A car came down the side street and swerved as it saw my form in 
the lane. The driver honked and flashed it's lights as it swerved into 
the other lane and I could hear them through the power windows. "Dumb shit!" 
her voice electric, reflecting the cracks of thunder that periodically rumbled 
down from the side alley that carressed the rain and pushed me into the path 
of rain. I could feel the sound in my spine, coming up from the asphalt into 
the soles of my feet, travelling into the capillaries there, following my veins 
through my heart, infusing my lungs, forcing air out like a gasp for air only 
backwards; not me gasping, the air was gasping, stealing it's breath from me, 
reacting to the shuddering waves of sound that fell onto it from the heaving sky.
   I forget when the feelings stopped, when my body became empty of anything. 
It was like a rock, hit so often by waves, that it was smooth where waves rolled over, 
changing nothing. And I stood still. I stood still until the rain had passed.