Draft 1 of a Strange New Poem

The following draft is very different from my normal writing. Here I tried to imagine a life going totally awry. This kind of wrong turn could happen to any of us, to our families and friends. "Nothing human is alien to me" (The famous quotation by Terence reads: "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto").

What Didn’t Happen [draft 1]

The house was filled with cat piss and dog sh**,

The mortgage couldn’t be paid since she left,

The utilities were sent partial payments.

In his head, rutted dialogues replayed every minute of his failed marriage

As he tried to correct things he said and did

Or find the fatal flaw

That caused her to leave.

He could no longer sleep and then

He could no longer eat.

Strange paranoia seeped into his soul

And strange confused thinking alarmed friends and family

Who called often and visited often

Trying to find ways to help him, but the downward spiral accelerated,

Totally out of control,

Until one day he took his shotgun and blasted the 2 outside dogs to kingdom come,

Then mercy killed the little house dog.

He got out the five-gallon cans of gas and doused the garage and basement,

A mortgage he could no longer pay,

And the filthy stinking house would become a cinder.

Then next door to the other house they had owned and rented to Tom.

And not knowing that Tom was sound asleep inside,

Dowsed the garage and basement with more gasoline,

Struck a match then headed for the barn

Where he emptied his shot gun into the tractor that he could no longer pay for

And lit the straw on fire until everything was gone:

The 2 old outside dogs, the house dog, the house, the car,

the rented house, the tractor, the little barn,

And Tom, incinerated and suffocated as he slept unknown to the desperate

Paranoid, confused, sleepless, broken

Man-boy.

That’s what didn’t happen—but could have.