A brief instant, coming back
frequently, but not more than a
spark, a tight frame, when I surely killed
my son and a dear friend, one of those

lashes where there is no possibility
of survival barring some god
which flowered sympathy for the
tragic follies of men so deleterious to
themselves as I, and that maroon

truck which should have flown through
unforgiving skies, which would have
fallen so far, it would have bled its
own gallons of life as that same

merciful god, merciful if it had allowed
us to die instantly, would have used
our own gallons of blood for lessons
for people who were meant to be

frightened by the terrific powers of
those named follies, this increasingly
swamped unconsciousness which
seems to alleviate years of agony, of
empty purposelessness, but only

prolongs the blankets of pain,
as the stadium grows larger and
larger, our wiring blurs in tornadic
waves, sounds fuller than a stadium
should allow, having dreamt of the

massiveness of the musicians we
longed to see cranked my drive to
a state beyond intoxication into an

evil blob of emotionally stormy
empty, evil for it was to murder
us but for that sympathetic god,

and when this flash comes back,

I long to know that god for one
moment or more and thank it

for that night,

ask it how it chose
such worthless, mostly
in my case,

candidates for rescue, but the truth

seems to be I’ve been saved
from the nothing of the end
millions of times, despite
thousands of desires for the end

from a defeated spirit, it seems
this impossible prevention of the
end was either done to save only
my son and my friend, or more

frighteningly, done to prove to me
that something loves me despite
my follies, that something needed
to show me my powerless receipt
of a gift too large to imagine.

.