Dark Warrants

Ralph was afraid of the dark.

This goes without saying for

as soon as the lights went out,

he was up, through the door

  and gone.

He, a grown man-

so many years my senior.

I, a boy, still sitting there,

acknowledging the unmistakable

absence of illumination.

The foibled failure of photons

  to rain, chicane and

      flood a room with light.

And hey,    I'm okay with that.

So what's up with Ralph?

How can two share a windowless room,

one man see nothing more

than the lack of light,

   and the other,

absolute     terror?

To see nothing but darkness...

To see darkness.

Not darkness as mere absence of light,

but darkness as some tangible substance.

That of such heavy enveloping presence

as to suffocate both mind, body, and soul.

And I'm almost certain

this has to do with love or

  some lack thereof.

Ralph had been to Viet Nam.

And this was when Viet Nam

  became     Viet Nam.  

Sure, I suppose those people

  and    that nation existed

sometime prior to the 1960s,

but    not for us.

Prior to the 60s,

it was some sprawling jungle

that took up the space

between India and Japan.

This before that period we

decided to administer

tough-love by way of    napalm.

And yes, this has to do with love

  or some lack thereof.

Ralph was there in Saigon not as soldier

   but civilian contractor.

One of those greasy cogs in our

mechanized machine du war amour.

And there, one night in a dark alley,

Ralph had a gun put in his face,

and   he    did not    love it.

Every effort

his American brethren had done

to win hearts and minds

by way of jacketed lumps o' lead,

had somehow tarnished an

otherwise amiable back-alley romance.

Looking for love in all the wrong places.

The American foreign policy

   in a nutshell.

Of course every wrong place sells

   some sort of love if you're

        willing to pay the price.

Not that that's really love.

Not that Ralph was looking for true love.

Rather just some salacious

pseudo-swoon and

spoon at the moon, plastic

made-in-the-orient version

  of the real deal.

Flesh to flesh without all that

valentine heart and

monogamy o' mind crap.

Someone to fulfill his needs.

If not love, then some surrogate of love.

I.e. "Me love you long time."

Or, that is, until Ralph tells you

  ya gotta go.

And this has to do with love,

or the lack thereof.

For two weeks straight

Ralph sat in the hotel's bar

and never ventured out the front door.

And there came a point

when the Vietnamese bartender

  asked him why.

Seems Ralph feared for his life.

Seems someone out there

  wanted to kill him.

Seems his jilted ex-girlfriend

had put out a hit on him.

Seems her un-dying love for him

still had some dying in there

and she was ever so willing to share.

"Me no love you long time, no more."

And the dark outside

got a little bit darker.

Heads or tails.

Love or hate.

How can you toss a coin

called "adoration"   

up into the air, have it

there land in the street

and come up "murder"?

Grabbing a towel,

the bartender commences to

wiping the length

of the counter before him

and without looking up states,

"You know,

the answer to your problem is easy."

"How's that?"

replies an attentive Ralph.

And here, the bartender

looks him in the eye

and bluntly states,

"You hire someone to kill her."

"Kill her?!"

exclaims a bewildered Ralph.

"Well," continues the bartender.

"You put out a contract on her life,

   with the stipulation

that if you die,   she dies."

And the way Ralph tells it,

it didn't cost too much.

In fact, it seemed

rather a bargain.

It was shortly after this

that the girlfriend

let it be known to Ralph

that she had cancelled her hit.

This with the understanding that

Ralph cancel his as well.

'Cause you know,

it would sorta suck if

Ralph accidentally got

run over by a bus.

What with money

having changed hands,

  and a contract being

      a contract.

And all of this...

All of this has to do with

that thing called "love"

or the lack thereof.

Oh, I find myself

pondering the benefits

of instilling

a Mafioso mindset

into our myriad  

interpersonal relationships.

For with this,

we might actually have

a little extra incentive to

be civil with one another.

I love you ‘til death do us part.

Truly

dark thoughts

indeed.

c 2012 Jack Hubbell