in this voiceless silence interrupted
by the whirring internal combustion
engines, rubber running across worn-down
concrete, these assemblies of metal growl
past, slashing through the air like two-ton knives
at 70 miles per hour, almost
like the tumult of a rushing river
or waves crashing down on the silver shore
my mind lost in the eddies and whirpools
of wind and debris, as the sunlight streams
in, vainly trying to evaporate
the dark mood crouching upon my soul like
a gremlin ready to ambush and havoc

seeking some faint memory, some trace of happiness
and not finding it, not in the hidden recesses
of my tumbled mind, that feeling of
having her beside me, the warmth
and tenderness of her embrace
in those murky memories of childish romance
certainly, no happiness in those fits of
jealousy, of possessiveness, of
feeling like every moment spent
away from her was losing her second by second
until in the deep darkness of the fall
I lost her at last, and she betrayed me
leaving this disfiguring scar upon my heart

and maybe the closest I ever came to happiness
was to know that someone like her, whose
smile, like sunlight itself illuminates
the bleak caverns of my crumbling mind
and even in this harrowed mood, a tendril of joy
wraps itself around my heart before
it bursts like a delicate soap bubble
to know her, and to have her in my life
though she was never mine, will never be mine
perhaps I was doomed to see the Promised Land
but to never dwell there myself