Skip to main content

 

The 3 PM Shadow

The 3 PM Shadow

It’s Good Friday again, but where is the "good"?

In the splinters of a cross, or the spilled, holy blood?

How can torture be sacred? How is persecution a grace?

When the world barely pauses to look at His face.

The shops open late, a slow Sunday crawl,

While families crowd tables and ignore the call.

Even the cogs of the healers have ground to a halt,

Leaving patients in limbo—through no one’s own fault.


So forgive me, Great Maker, if I skip the oak pew,

For I’m still a bit "cross," still a bit angry with You.

I can’t weep for Your Son when I’m drowning in her,

In the scent of the "white sticks" and the hospital’s blur.

The fumes that I breathed while I stood by her side,

While the "medical crap" took her out with the tide.

You made us in Your image, or so the tale goes,

But You left us defenseless against all these woes.


Cancer and vertigo, dementia’s cruel theft—

What kind of a Father leaves a daughter bereft?

Mum said You weren’t cruel, that You’d never allow

Your own Son to suffer… yet look at us now.

I’ve heard it a thousand times, the story, the grief,

But I find in the chapel no spark of relief.

I won't sing the old hymns from the dark eighteen-hundreds,

While my heart, in its silence, sits broken and plundered.


At three in the afternoon, when the sun hides its light,

I’ll remember the darkness, the reach of the night.

But I’ll weep in my kitchen, in the frost of my home,

To the melancholic synth of a-ha’s monotone.

The "Silly Season" is here, but the cheer is a lie,

A thin, plastic shroud for a gray, empty sky.

You took it all from me—the warmth and the play,

Leaving only this sliver of a future, someday.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  Vertigo: My Strange Bedfellow I sit here, staring at my webcam,  Under blue skies stretched above.  The mercury rests below ten degrees;  Spring is blooming, indifferent and cold.  Yet I remain, a silent observer, Watching the world go by from the glass. Vertigo is a strange bedfellow. It arrived as a souvenir from Rome—  Now I long for that Italian realm,  The golden light, the warmth, the Buongiorno .  Yet here I am, anchored in the Manor,  Sizzling and fading in the sudden glare;  The sun is a weight too heavy to bear. Pavements tilt and the traffic spins dizzy. Vertigo is a strange bedfellow. I read, I write, I repair my life,  Clearing the clutter, one byte at a time.  It is a quiet ache, this restriction—  Physically mobile, yet visually bound. Vertigo is a strange bedfellow. So I will wait for the velvet of dusk,  Before I dare to emerge from the hall—  Unfolding my wings like a bat in the Spring,  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is an Effelump?

What is an Effelump? I had a dream and out popped the Effelumps, and I realized that they had no real bearing on reality whatsoever. I figured they must be practically human in form, for they had two legs, two arms, and one head. They were rotund figures—neither slim nor obese, just rotund, like pot bellies in the middle—with commonplace necks, heads, arms, and legs. They had ruddy complexions; neither brown nor dark, neither suntanned nor "other," just ruddy and red, but not unsightly. I confess that until this day I have never read The Hunting of the Snark , but upon reading such a delectable masterpiece, I realize that upon nonsense, stories do indeed grow—and grow they must. For if it’s not told a thousand times until we are old, then it’s a story neither heard nor told. So, as in the Snark , what is, was, and will be, no one will ever know. I encourage my reader to go forth and read the Snark , for it’s indeed what it’s meant to be, and so is my book. Well, what does it ...
Post a Comment
Read more