LE FEU AUX YEUX

“LE FEU AUX YEUX”

BY SHEB SCHEBELLA

 There’s a silence in the rain that helps heal the pain. There’s a story in her head that’s brewing like a storm. There’s thunder outside their window and a firecracker of light bleeding down the wall and across the room in a chair sits the wreckage of it all. The arms of this nightmare are wrapped up in an empty bottle of wine and the dog on the couch is his only friend that comes to mind. She places her hand against the window so the bass moves through her cry and shakes the tears free into the storm of the night. The fire crackles but, goes unheard it’s the ice in his scotch glass that recites his slurred thoughts into words. Their stares are moving toward never, and the house shakes as nature’s cannons roar yet unstilted they both remain, so much rain yet they both claim to be the drain.  There was a beggar boy standing outside looking in at them and he must have felt so lonesome while sipping the last of his gin. He stood there in the pouring rain so statuesque holding up his chin as god’s wrath pounded down upon him; and then the lighting cracked once more as he tossed his bottle and inside a wine glass crashed to the floor, and a dainty fist smashed through a window pain, and God sang out with more rain; and there I was across the street standing in a puddle that was more than ankle deep. Insanity I thought insanity in deed, but how pleasant the rain.

THE ONCE CAFE

“The Once Café”

By Sheb Schebella

 The crunch of ice beneath my feet, a blast of wind in my face as I turn up Main Street to make my way to the café and all the while I can’t help think what became of my youth and then I remember, I got older, but thank god not old. A frozen smile is chiseled and finds its way beneath my happy eyes as I trudge on thinking I am going to treat myself to a pastry as well today. I look down at my trusted hound that carries his own leash in his mouth and remind him that he too will be getting his usual jelly doughnut and he perks up. As harsh as the weather is it is still a very fine day to be in love and to know the other one is mad for me. There’s a brilliant sense of security in the knowing that when the sun goes down that a blanket of kindness shall shelter you through the night. It is spring today but one would never know by the weather, only by name is it present for this time of year. I sit alone inside the café and watch people punch away at their Blackberries with vein protruding foreheads, I have never owned a blackberry and I don’t think I ever will; I never allowed my world to become that complex, that fast, that in personable. The romance of it all eludes me much like a wild pitch from a spoiled child. I fold over my newspaper and pullout my pencil to attempt the New York crossword puzzle and a young lady from a neighboring table with a pleasant smile informs me that there is an ad for that and it’s free, perhaps I think but the 400 dollar phone and the two year contract is not. I nod and smile with a thank you and leave it at that. Society has become so fast passed that there are games now I see where people can grow electronically simulated gardens, cringe goes I at the very thought of such a preposterous oddity. It seems the definition of passion has changed and is only kept alive by a small lithium battery at best by most it seems to me. The old café where once people shared greetings, conversations on small town politics and the weather has become an isolation tank for the patrons and is about as personable as an airport bar in Bangkok. My hound gives a hardy bark through the front window of the café letting me know he is ready to make haste and I don’t blame him. I purchase three doughnut holes for him to fetch on the stroll home before leaving. My hound Japhy heels next to me as we round our mark once again down main street, heading back to warmth back to our reality where the world is a kinder place and there are more than enough hours in a day to find time to say “I love you.”

WHY I STAY

“WHY I STAY”

BY SHEB SCHEBELLA

Well the good news has been scratched away from the lenses of my eyes and even through the years of tears and countless beers I still can’t see why through the shallow conversations of my fellow man why do I still want to stay and play. It just seems to me most people these days don’t have stories but merely incidents in their humdrum days of self-containment  while allowing themselves to be force fed by the Christian hand of gluttony, oh how they all want a label of their own and a title to bestow. All I really want to hear is a soft whisper of a twelve string guitar and feel the warmth of another body that knows how to tell a story and color it to with echoes of laughter while a puppy dog’s tail is strumming the ground. When did a camp fire become a place to go and text and other hand held electronics are used to describe to another how strangely bright the stars are on a particular night? The world has become hollow and thoughts without action outline what little response most have. As I watch them pass around the Xanax and pour out some more boxed white, and just prior to their livers shutting down as they approach blackout close to midnight I may find them enjoyable just enough to stay for just one more round; but really it is not until they all leave and I sit there alone and wait for that friend and lover to get back home do I find my vision begin to restore and the canvas of my thoughts is wiped clear at the sense of them approaching near, this is my good news; I no longer keep track of the calendar only the blossoms on the trees, this is why I stay…