Rick Leddy

The Day After

The day after the Fourth of July

At an Inglewood gas station

Grease monkey, eighteen and bullet proof 

A dipstick in my hand pumping dead dinosaurs

My hometown rapidly transforming into hard stares 

and thrown finger signed death

Baby-faced gangsters walk in looking for tires

For their Mama, they say

One carries a yellow Peechee folder that

he opens revealing the dull blue horror

of explosive metallic death 

A threat of Gone Forever

Suddenly stuck in my face

I stare at the bottomless black hole barrel

that swallows the summer light whole

They take the money from the drawer

Threatening to end me

As if it is nothing

As if I am nothing but a punched timecard

My hands tied, shoved into the back room

Now alone with them among tumbled batteries and spare parts

Awash in the acrid smell of rubber and oil

reminds me of growing up — reminds me of my father

Of the void left by the so many words never said

The gunman a nervous kid younger than me

His hand shaking with murderous palsy

Growls

Sit Down

It isn’t supposed to end like this

There is no flashing movie of my life 

No speeches or noble endings

Just a gun and an anonymous face and a blinding flash

before the flame swallowed by darkness

surrenders to an incomprehensible eternity

Feeling every heartbeat pounding fierce life through me

The screeching ape in my brain screaming

No No No No

But there are no words except mute eyes begging

Don’t

“Count to 100,” says the silhouetted reaper 

with the Smith and Wesson scythe 

as he starts to leave

Then he hesitates thinking briefly:

Should I play God?

The moment frozen in ambered dread

My body clenched, awaiting personal apocalypse

Anticipating the four horsemen unleashed in a slug

ripping through bone and flesh 

I close my eyes expecting sound and fury

The final benediction of gone too soon

But receive only silence

My eyes open, staring at the ghostly after-image

Where death had once stood 

Now gone

Counting to twenty 

Stealing cautiously into the flat afternoon 

The concrete hot and white beneath shuffling feet

Head swimming, breathing gulps of near miss

Stumbling through the glare of the indifferent day

My innocence seared to the bone 

The smell of it fresh in my nostrils

I am a stranger staring into the sun, 

watching explosions of summers murdered

All killed in the twilight of a dingy, grease-filled room

I had assumed there would always be days after

Weeks followed by weeks

Summers followed by summers

Lovely clasped strands of pearls 

Circling forever

But days after are unbound,

unraveling through outstretched fingers

All of our tomorrows 

snatched from us in an instant 

Without meaning, without reason

Becoming forgotten, faded snapshots 

that never grow older

I stand outside, shirt soaked with dodged bullets 

On the day after the Fourth of July 

The promise of cool overcast chased away

Replaced by ruthless pavement shimmers 

Surroundings so bright and beautiful and fragile

So impermanent

My hands still tied behind me

Ropes dug red into wrists.

Leaving scars that will never fade

I wait for somebody

Anybody 

to come 

Before I begin to scream

Summer is Crimson

She was a ruby beauty

Auburn hair flowing beneath 

a white hat with a vermillion ribbon

and broad summer brim 

A white sundress with red designs

Danced with her movements

So lovely

This crimson vision

That I had to stop and stare 

at the Celtic mirage of her

As I listened to the lilting siren song

of her walk

She lowered her head

Ocean blue eyes dancing above a Mona Lisa smile

as she passed by

Unaware she had given a gift

That she had made me young

for just a moment

Remembering when Summers were filled

with lovely young women in sundresses

When stares were given and returned

And what ifs hung in the hot air

Winter so far away then

It was unfathomable 

Until it came

I laughed at the sun

And my own foolishness

As the phosphorescence of her remained

Her Summer fading away

With each step into the shimmering day

Breeze

The breeze blows softly

A movement of air wedged between the morning and afternoon

Cool, but with promise of heat to come

A brief caress 

A reminder of Summers past

When the bright flat light and the morning promise of heat felt newer

against smooth, unmottled skin that turned brown 

without thought of future consequence

Water danced glittering confetti while feet burned in retina burning white

The ocean breeze fighting the inland beast

Heat shimmering off the scalding pavement

The wind moving thicker hair

The days of towels floating on silicon seas

Above the heartbeat of the waves

and the insurgent tide 

Nothing to do but be then

Alive and doing nothing

because there was nothing but Time

Then

More Summers ahead than behind

Now, the breeze comes again

This time on damaged, mottled skin and thinned hair

But the touch of it is good

Its fingers a brush from a lost lover

Young again under the flat Summer sky

The sun exhaling warmth into the coming hours

Praying for more Summers ahead,

I close my eyes as the fireworks behind closed lids

Explode