Rainbow

When the grenade came over the wall
it was Sunday
and my soul was weak from
a constant and continual
barrage of
booze
poverty
loose women
and bad luck
so I just held my breathe
and let it go off
with a huge
BANG!

… I was reduced to a million pieces.

Then came a text message
it wasn’t God
or Jesus
or Satan
or the Grim Reaper
nobody from the great beyond
it wasn’t even my sister
my lawyer
or my baby’s momma
just
a woman
a good woman, in fact,
that thought that
at the end of this storm
ravaging the Mojave desert
upon this broken Sunday afternoon
would be a rainbow.

She was waiting for it
her text message
actually stated that
she couldn’t wait to see it
so I stared out my window
in vain
looking for it
desperate in fact
and, not seeing it
I got out the binoculars
searched every end of the horizon
hoping to catch just a glimpse
of this colorful arch of hope
looking to pin point the exact location
of it’s gift of potted gold
but, alas
I saw nothing.

The pieces of my soul
were still scattered
around the room
and, with little strips of scotch tape
some glue
paperclips
I fastened something resembling myself
back together.

Not a bad likeness I thought
as I held it up to the light
in fact
life outside the margins
never looked so good!

I got a beer out of the refrigerator
as the sun crept back into the horizon.

Rainbows are always out there
just hidden in the clouds
invisible to us
until the time comes
when they feel it is appropriate
to present themselves
and
sometimes they take the form of
winning lottery tickets
winning horses
free meals
rides home
loose change on the sidewalk
or
just good women
that like to text message
hopeful things
to guys whose
souls are splattered
all over the living room
walls.