Wyrd Spreadsheet Of Fate

Wyrd Spreadsheet Of Fate
© Surazeus
2025 03 03

Our world that was real ten years ago 
has vanished into the mists of dreamland, 
so now I dream about the way things were, 
walking across campus to the classroom 
where I will learn about the distant past 
so I can perform the future as play. 

John sits in the diner on Nineteenth Street, 
eating scrambled eggs and sipping black coffee, 
and contemplates how both sorrow and joy 
scramble beauty and ugliness of life 
like abstract paintings on museum walls, 
while the endless morning train loudly clacks. 

Three men wearing ski masks break in the store 
and fill leather bags with diamonds and jewels, 
then whistle as they saunter down the street 
to play chess with old men in the lake park 
who talk about their life in prison camps 
when they survived the war-time holocaust. 

Karen types numbers on the white keyboard, 
filling columns in wyrd spreadsheet of fate 
with expenses and profits of the heart 
to calculate health of the national soul, 
then wanders past the lake park to eat lunch, 
smiling at John as the strangers pass by. 

Aiming pistol at the three diamond thieves, 
John orders them to lie down on the ground, 
but they hurl the wood chessboard at his face 
and zig-zag through the hungry lunch-time crowd 
till one takes Karen hostage with the knife 
his grandfather gave him when he was twelve. 

Filming the hostage scene with mobile phones, 
the crowd parts as John aims gun at the thief 
who presses sharp knife at throat of the woman 
who tells him about her daughter named Tammy 
who likes to paint castles and unicorns, 
but he shouts and curses God in the clouds. 

The small white church in the grove of oak trees 
with its steeple pointed to the empty sky 
calls to the raven stuck in human form 
who falls to his knees and drops the sharp knife, 
allowing Karen to escape his fear, 
so she hugs him as he cries for his mother. 

Strolling together on the lake park trail, 
John and Karen smile shy on their first date, 
then tell each other about their childhoods 
as they eat spaghetti and drink red wine, 
then hold each other in the silver mist, 
and kiss like the world will go on forever.