Requiem for the West (ePub)

An apocalyptic poem entitled "Requiem for the West" is at the center of this tale, which has equal elements of pervasive mockery, offbeat romance, doomsday premonitions, and Dilbert-like farce.

Larry Zane is a professor of English who is appointed to a committee that is running a poetry contest where the hundred-thousand-dollar first prize will be given to the poem that most resembles "The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe. Also on the committee are Jaden Graves, the chain-smoking President of the college, Julian Mendoza, the sexual-predator Provost, and Mariah Rhodes, an attractive woman lawyer.

Meanwhile, as the committee becomes lost in waves of cigarette smoke, sexual innuendos, and contemptuous insults, Larry becomes disillusioned with the relationship that he has with his longtime girlfriend, Sierra Raines. Sierra is a haphephobic—the dictionary word for a person who is antagonistic to being touched. No hand-holding, no kissing, and certainly none of THAT. And so, with his romantic life going nowhere, Larry finds Mariah to be irresistible, while Sierra, with her love of art, music, and intelligent conversation, begins to fade away like an outdated fad.

And then, in Chapter Thirteen, "Requiem for the West" arrives—a seven-hundred-word alliterative poem that makes Poe look like the author of "Reflections of an Eternal Optimist." The committee can hardly be blamed for excessively bad behavior after attempting to come to terms with the fireball conclusion of "Requiem." Poetry isn't supposed to be like this! No one wants to read a crescendo of catchy alliterations that have them, quite literally, being fried to a crisp.

As the committee totally disappears in a cloud of cigarette smoke and a monster coughing attack...as Larry agonizes over his conflicted feelings for Sierra and Mariah...as the world staggers through one crisis after another...as the nuclear weapons pile up like thunderclouds on a hot summer day...

Finally, by the end of this tumultuous tour through Dilbert and Doomsday, Larry is led down the path that he has always been seeking, while Sierra...well, that's another story. But for the author of "Requiem," the vision is, as Poe once wrote after he had fallen into one of his many horrific depressions, "the destruction of all things by fire."