Friday, November 28, 2008

Alex Millsom

(Too many years ago. 1980/1996)

'There is nothing more appalling than being alive and having to die.' - McGuire.


Damn! The memory of Alex, 16 Years Old: DEAD!
Smashed over an L.A. highway lying there like
an open wound for every one to see and remember
their own childhood. All the cars that passed and
all the passengers that looked, would never know
that Alex would be on a life support machine
for one week before it was finally switched off.
No, they still do not know that and nor should they.
Nor do they know that Alex's parents where Scottish
and that on the day he lay dying on that road
the woman who came to comfort him in his pain
was Scottish and the last voice he heard was Scottish.

4 comments:

Rachel Fox said...

I am one of those people who gets nervous just thinking about traffic so I was bound to like this...and I do. 'Open wound' works well.

Jim Murdoch said...

In my first book I included a number of vignettes like this where we get to find out what is happening to certain people throughout the globe. It really is scary when you think about it how little we are really aware of what is going on around us. We see so little and make sense out of even less.

McGuire said...

'We see so little and make sense out of even less.'

God Jim, I hope that's not an indictment of my writing. If it's not it certianly could be.

I agree with you though and I think it is only certian times in our life we sit down and reconsider death and all its ramifications.

One life is filled with so much complexity, so much orginaisation, so much tiny detial and triviality, it is forever jarring and destabilising to see that die in an instant.

Dave King said...

I find it difficult to comment on this without becoming platitudinous, but your writing is anything but, it goes straight to the heart and does what it should do.