Fender bender and other poems
One
They kill you with small cars,
good mileage vs. impact death rate,
the fender crumpled up to your chest
like a rolled-up tuxedo plate
from a Laurel and Hardy film,
only bleeding at the chin--
and the back seat part of the tiny
trunk, exploding gas tank
seeping of foreign fluids
and memories of elegant
days in grandfather's cadillac
when worries of AIDS, war, and
crack cocaine took back seat
to the configurations of
unhooking her
bra
Two
I wait for the tow truck like a helpless child,
the lost fortunes of machine bringing all to doom,
not stuck on the side of the road this time,
but in the role of mourner,
awaiting the burial of a friend--
tow truck as hearse lacking flowers,
car headlights like empty eyes,
even the key doesn't turn in the ignition any more.
Three
Sitting on the side of Route 46
with Hamlet reflected on the windshield,
the ghost of a king whispering of a devilish plot,
as cars rush over the bridge,
rumbling the motel sign and diner lights,
a might too warm for October,
a second Indian Summer,
slowly etching the leaves to brown,
leaves dangling in the bland beams of headlights and street lamps,
bleeding alternately amber and blue,
rather than red,
resisting to the last laugh the cry of autumn,
wet, crumbly tears falling as my car window lets them in,
as if to protect these few from the morning holocaust
that will wake to a covered street.
Four
They broke the windows on the old Datzun
because it sat too long in one place,
a victim of environment,
taken apart piece by piece
until only the dust survives,
curious ghetto children
looking for thrills first,
then enlightenment,
how one wire leads to another,
tugging at the ends till they shake free
like the clock I took apart at three
and could not piece back together
without a dozen extra elements
the war horse car like a child itself,
dying, not growing,
each part slowly crumbling after ten years
a foot might have been more easily severed,
the toe nails glinting on the street like lost jewels,
headlights, mirrors and windows,
not one thing of value left inside or out,
just memories.
Five
Junk yards walk on metal limbs
through the high reeds
and screeching gull-voices
that weave up from the sea
palisades of plastic trash bags
marking distant wall
where ticket counters and parking lots
drag in bodies for sport
thick fumes of parkway and turnpike
stretch with refinery stench
like clouds of death,
tumbling passed
without comment,
while I, beneath the eves
of the highway
stretch out, fishing line
and sleeping bag
in the back
of an abandoned
ford.
Six
We launched ourselves
from Portland, Oregon
in a `57 Buick
with no brakes,
a full load of hopeful
people seeking New York,
Route 80 divided into
North and South
like the Union,
a West Coast Civil War
which always came to blows
in Salt Lake City
where sad-eyed Mormons
preached to us
about our Hippie ways,
while paying go-go dancers
minimum wage,
prostitution widespread
beneath the great
temple walls,
threatening us with jail
if we stopped for gas.
Seven
Not me, Mistah!
I got a car at home
and a brother who taught
me to drive at ten
tearing down Broadway, Paterson
with no hands,
making me screamed till he learned
me the trick
not to look for cops or people
or to think there was anybody or thing
that was gonna save me but myself,
doing a fair job of that since
though I admit
not as well as
my brother since
he's dead!
Eight
Where are you going,
bright corvette?
Your macho, menstrual mentality
humming in the streets,
the indignant poise of
arrogant youth
pressed low against asphalt,
with painted wealthy faces
behind your glass,
not real or caring or whole,
no thought passes between
those minds
only motion and impression,
cold and gallant and
as out of date as
Don Quixote,
a female Sancho Panza
painting her nails
in your side seat,
as you search for
windmills to
challenge
Nine
The fog's up tonight,
not deep and dismal,
but a soft haze hanging
over the street lamps
like a T.S. Eliot poem,
almost smoky,
as if each barroom had opened its doors,
letting out the steam of over-heated men and go-go dancers.
It circles the orange tip of my cigarette and me,
a damp hand pressed against my chest
as cars zip down the highway oblivious to it,
truck horns blaring,
high beams flickering like demon eyes.
The silver shell of the Tick Tock Diner
glimmers through it like a 1940s photograph,
white waitress uniforms moving from window to window
its small gravel lot stuffed with cars.
Old men with bad eyes
sitting behind their steering wheels
waiting for the fog to lift,
and me among them,
old at twenty nine,
too frightened to slip back into the stream of moving traffic,
too restless to stay put,
coming, but never going,
as if frozen by the fog.
Ten
Walking in an odd place,
with wood floors and white walls
and windows wide, wide open,
sun winking madly
behind waves of waiting rain
and brownstone neighbors
with brown stained stairs
and horns honking, and
voices crowding the still
wet wires aching,
chirping, flirting
ravenous birds, and the
chip, chip, chip of a
mouse in its hole,
and me, nearly naked
rubbing it all deeper
into my eyes.
Eleven
She wears thin to nothing,
drinking up sand dunes,
eyes burning with salt and desire,
her dreams crashing under
dawn's cool umbrella,
the melancholy of perpetual motion,
rushing to and fro,
a shy actor waiting for
its audience of beach towels
and sunburns and
dancing, loving moon.
Twelve
Everyone mistook him for the plumber,
his purple van parked perpetually at the curb,
pealing letters from some previous owner's profession,
the phone number long vanquished,
but not the name,
drawing old women with steel wool hair
whose clogged drains and burst pipes
needed his hurried attention.
And he, fresh from sleep,
rubbing his grizzled jaw
with long practiced irony,
taking whole minutes to tell them
he's not what they think.
Thirteen
The night bends softly to a single
gentle finger of a head lamp misaimed,
whose partner rides
like a blank faced stranger in the darkness.
Drizzle nicks the windshield,
dotting it with senseless periods
that smear into protracted arcs
with the sweeping rubber wipers,
the tires moan,
crying through thru metal rectangular
honeycombs of an expansion bridge,
stretched across the lapping flow of dark brown liquid,
sloshing white in the cool dreary spray of imitated light.
I think of you, my missing partner,
leaving me half blind and alone,
leaving me to moan across these waves without direction.
But I don't know you,
or the soft brown that splashes at me
from your watery eyes.
They are an addiction.
They are the nagging pull
of the westward wind at me
as I stand on this bridge's end waiting to leap,
waiting to immerse myself in the thick flow below
and fill my lungs and heart and head with you.