Worlds in collision

Picking out notes

one by one

on the hundred year old

hundred dollar piano,

composing idly

mid afternoon.

No job or prospects,

nobody else at home

the unexpected happened

-the doorbell rang.

Two young people

dressed for Sunday

on this Monday

with pamphlets in their hands

I would have said no thanks

but I was bored.

And the girl was about as pretty

as any girl I'd ever seen

so I asked them to come in.

We talked about the coming End Times

which was very appealing  to me,

stuck in this suburban cocoon

rattling around my family's house

writing songs on a piano

one note at a time.

And every minute spent

discussing the Book of Revelations

was a minute I could stare

at the girl's eyes and lips and hair.

Half an hour later,

it was time for them to go

but we made a date for them

to return a few days later

for further conversation.

I guess you could say

that I was a real shit

because I didn't really expect

the four horsemen of the Apocalypse

to come riding across the earth,

or the seven seals to be broken

and the seven trumpets to blast

and the seven bowls to pour out

God's wrath.

-Much as I wanted it to be true.

But if it meant the pretty girl would come back,

I'd be a happy host.

I'd read an interesting book the year before,

suggested by my favorite teacher in his Logic class,

the only class I kept attending after dropping out of high school.

Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision

which correlated celestial events in the sacred scriptures

of many cultures as actual historical events.

Moses parting the Red Sea,

the pillar of fire the Israelites

followed through the desert......

He said it was all

from the burning sphere called Venus

trapped by Earth's gravity for years

triggering the cataclysms

recorded by the ancient scribes.

I floated the idea to the Witnesses

and the pretty one looked pained.

I was disappointing her

and when I did not refrain

from my secular speculations

she said that Satan

was poisoning my mind,

trying to seduce them

and wasting their time.

I admitted that seduction

was something

to which I was inclined,

but of a different kind.

She blushed and said they'd better leave

and the high color in her cheeks,

the flame in her eyes aroused me,

even in my shame.

I said that I was sorry

as I walked them to the door

that my deception was born from loneliness

and that I realized my apology was poor.

The house was quiet then

and I took the water glasses we had shared

to the kitchen and tossed the Watchtower

in the trash, sat down at the piano

and note by note,

wrote a melody

as bleakly minor as I felt.