The Worst Isn't Over

Besides the hurt, the torture of knowing the worst isn’t over

he breathes

He talks while barely walks with pegs for legs

He walked backwards funny, not backwards southern

A limp, a crosswise gimpy stomp of a mess

from denial, a glimpse of what drinking and driving

can do not only hurts worse than the pain of walking

But the pain of living, striving beyond the corner piece between 5th and Senile street

and the endless talking, the chatter, the perpetual banter

His life was a disaster, a deceived lie held by nails and plaster from the debris

of a car

a house

and the children inside.

Besides the fear, the nightmare of knowing the worst isn’t over

she breathes

She holds herself while barely holding her child in the mild cold

She folds herself, her legs inside curling into a ball of metastasized irony

An addiction, a frustration burning in clockwork ritual of drugs

Hungover railings hungover, a vehement stupor of dishevelled will

She walks along the bridges over a sea of torment and a sky full of guilt

Tilt over sea over crashing sea of waving atrophy

Her life was an atrocity, deceived by the lies of a misguiding decoction

of Novocain

an imagination

with her baby as a sketch pad of misery

Besides the joy, the detriment of knowing the worst isn’t over

we breathe

Holding on to the allusion of creation but an illusion of fate

Hating the worst of the best ignoring the rest of it all

then finding that the worse to come was here all along

The fear of pain, the hurt, the torment that daunts us

to the point of obsession, regression to the point of insanity

But the pain of living, the fear of striving when others could not

has more to do with our guilt

The worthlessness of fearing helplessness never quells

the dead

the damned

and the worst of it all