Second Chance

This narrative poem is a flash-back scenario that deals with the beauty of making the right decision. It deals with spiritualism, love, and the idea of "turning the other cheek."

Second Chance

 

Grizzled grunting in the depths of the ghetto.

 

He’s gasping for air,

Growling in dying grief.

 

In an alleyway where no one is near,

Hector’s holding his cherished forty-ounce,

Pabst Blue Ribbons bitterly waving in full splendor

over a white mortuary sheet of aluminum.

 

Noon day heat beats a beam of pain across his exposed forehead,

Dehydrating his drained body 

Of the dismal existence that he has habitually hated.

 

His hallucinations hearken back to a time 

His mind has long since suppressed,

when his wife waded through the Caribbean waters of their honeymoon,

where he conceived his son that he always loved.

 

Snap! Hectors back in the steam of the Chicago summer,

Stifling,

Suffocating on acidic exhaust, 

Slipping into maddening strokes,

Wanting so desperately to be free,

To fall as far as he needs

To reach the end of infinity.

 

And he does indeed fall,

But only for a short while,

For he then lands on a ledge,

A protruding piece of his past he must see

Before passing.

 

Screaming and cursing,

They circle each other,

Two great beasts bewitched with a blood lust

Calmed only by the crutch of a cured love,

Cats cooed by the crooning of a crane’s corpse.

 

The female pounces first,

unable to quell the thirst

that dissolves her will and twists her innards,

for he’s waving the blood-drenched meat in her face,

the scent slicing apart sanity 

with the ease of a scythe on the wheat.

 

With this sinister, decisive strike,

The taunting male is given the sign,

The arrow is kissed, and trigger is bowed…

Release!

Stop!

 

The kitchen floor is riddled with the particles of a broken home.

 

Her sobs float up to Hector’s ears, along with his rampant panting

From lips caked with dried spit, and the dinner she’d just served him.

 

Woop woop!

Hector’s come too again and he hears…

There! A police car slowly slinking,

Crackling across the gravel,

Tooting its sirens for half-second beats,

A snake in the grass to pry him from

His one and only Home,

The Sanctuary he has dreamed of for decades.

 

“Sir are you alright?”

“…”

“Sir?”

 

Hector falls.

This time he keeps falling.

He reaches bottom.

 

When Hector opens his eyes,

It’s 2011 and he’s in his suburbia home,

In a sun-washed, blue-and-white kitchen.

His wife is yelling about the job he’d quit that day.

She slaps him across the face as hard as she can.

 

He does not raise a hand to her,

Emanating a warmth only love can achieve.

He slides to his knees,

Weeps quietly,

Her skin catching the satin tears

He’s waited so long to free.

 

As he looks up in her eyes,

He smiles deep inside.

Thus begins his second life.

 

 

 

  

 

 

   

 

    

 

Reviews

[JimmyFlux]

This is terrific. Strong message.

[for my ♥]

...This is sad really but alot of solid wisdom. nice job.

[A Risen Heroine.]

This is an awesome piece, it's cleverly written :)
Thank you so much for sharing :)

~A Fallen Heroine~

[Christie Moses]

This is very cleverly written, and I like the learning, and wisdom aspect of it. I thoroughly believe in second chances.
Awesome work.