Near Death (A Prose Poem)

The Voice of...God?

Photo by Rio Space on Unsplash

~

Near Death

I remember the Irish bar we were at that night

Christmastime, 2007.

I was 24. You were 25. We were drunk, of course.

Home for the holidays, in town from San Diego.

Ventura, where I grew up.

We chatted, you and me, at the bar,

The noise of bad karaoke—Guns N’ Roses, Black Sabbath, Motley Cru, Bon Jovi—

Cigarette smoke in the air (they allowed it there), the juicy smell of butter-drizzled popcorn from the little machine,

The cracking of pool balls against other pool balls,

The tinny, incessant, nonsense din of dozens of people all chattering loudly at once.

And then you met her. Or: She came to you.

Gothic-looking: Crow-black hair, severe bangs, deep brown eyes, punk-Goth clothes (red and black bondage-style miniskirt, ruby-red lips intense against the pale skin and black hair), Doc Martins, goth stockings.

She looked like trouble,

And she appeared drunk.

A perfect mix. (For you.)

Twenty minutes later she led us out of the bar, her hand clutching yours,

She saying she had a girlfriend “for me.”

She lived across town, off Victoria,

Not far from the county jail (a sharp irony).

The silence of the slick parking lot.

Her brand-new silver VW bug; didn’t even have plates yet.

Backseat for me, up front for you. She drove,

Though I’d seen her stumble several times

As We waltzed passed the pool table in the bar.

The car stunk of new car smell, the ripe punch of new leather.

She turned the key and the engine exploded quietly to life.

Black Sabbath’s Lord of This World blasted out of the stereo,

Loud,

Confirming, for me, her character.

I sensed madness even then,

Even

In

That

Precise

Moment.

Onto Telephone Road, heading east

We flew

Passing my old Episcopalian grade school, K-8,

The religious private school I’d attended all those years

Chapel each morning,

Saluting the flag

The Pledge of Allegiance.

And now, 24 years old, drunk, the windows down, the cool December California night rushing in, covering us all in it’s figuratively warm embrace.

I was still lost then, still three years off from hitting bottom and getting sober.

Still imprisoned with anger and fear,

Still mad at my parents for their imperfections,

The imperfections we all have.

And then suddenly we turned left onto Victoria Ave, heading North.

Black Sabbath assaulted the silent, empty road. Ventura on a Thursday at midnight.

You two talked up front.

Once, she weaved the car and it shifted across our lane into the right one.

I felt my stomach tighten and squeeze.

A minute later she did it again,

This time going too far left, nearly scraping the central double-curb with her car’s tire.

Two minutes later she veered to the right again. She was smoking a cigarette now, the smoke flying out the window into the fast-rushing night. You both threw your heads back, laughing about something. Sabbath raged, the heavy chords menacing, brilliant and somber. It reminded me of high school.

And then:

Out.

*

I came to—sort of—and was confused.

I was disoriented.

Everything was upside down. No, not upside down but

The car was on its side.

Gray smoke billowed out of the hood.

My first fear was an explosion.

I couldn’t move. Where was Goth Girl? Where were you?

Then I felt you grabbing me, unhooking my seatbelt.

Fire glimmered somewhere in my periphery.

Glass, plastic and rubber were omnipresent.

I felt numb,

Physically, psychologically.

It all seemed fake; planned; done for some terrible TV scene.

Using maximum strength, you somehow pulled me up, out of the back seat, onto the top of the car on it’s side, and held me while jumping with me down to the street.

I stood for a moment and then collapsed,

Feeling glass cutting into my skin.

Feeling the trickle of blood somewhere,

Hearing my shallow breathing,

Seeing that glimmer of fire again somewhere.

It felt like being in something like a dream mixed with a nightmare mixed with a cartoon fantasy; unreal. Like being on acid or magic mushrooms.

You picked me up again, off the cold, hard street

And carried me to the grass on the side of the road, carefully placing me on the green thickness.

I rested.

I watched as you went back to the car.

Now that I had perspective

I saw that the car was indeed on its side, fire burning at the back left tire,

Smoke rising up from the crunched accordion hood like some war zone,

And, horribly,

The woman, from the bar, pinned in the driver’s seat, her door flat against the road.

You tried to get her but you couldn’t.

It sounded like she was in excruciating pain.

A scream cut through the empty night like a knife slicing an ear off in one fell swoop.

And it was then—right then—that it happened to me.

A voice.

A “spiritual experience,” as some called it.

To be clear, I’d always been spiritual on some unknown level,

But never religious.

Dad was an atheist professor of chemistry and math

Mom’s childhood had been torn apart by a Catholic priest

Who stole my mother’s mother from my grandfather

And never apologized.

But, as I lay there numb on the grass on the side of Victoria Ave,

Unable to move,

A voice most certainly did enter into my mind,

One might say “from the heavens”

And the voice said:

Everything you think is important in life is ridiculous.

The drinking, the women, the danger.

All that matters in life is family.

All that matters in life is love.

I remember that last line specifically clearly:

All that matters in life is love.

I swore then and there to be a better person,

To quit drinking,

To be a kinder man,

A gentler lover,

A superior son.

But of course, after everything—the EMTs, the ambulance ride to the hospital, the stitches, the MRIs and CAT scans—

I took it all back and kept living the dishonest life I’d been living.

Foxhole prayers, they call it.

When you tell God, Get me out of this one and I swear I’ll change;

Ill never do it again.

But I had three years left of drinking.

Three years left of chaos, self-destruction, parental estrangement,

Self-loathing,

Fear.

Yet, when I did finally quit the bottle, and I was spending a lot of time in dank

Church basements,

I remembered the crash (we apparently had hit the curb causing a multiple-roll car wreck; we’d flipped three times), and I remembered The Voice,

And I knew that I had a Higher Power,

Not “God” exactly,

But something.

Something that wasn’t me. Something that transcended anarchy and the weakness of the human condition.

Something beautiful and enlightened and elegiac.

Something pure and good and perfect.

Everything I wasn’t.