Unforeseen Highways

Picking up the edges of my despair,
I remain as fetid leaves, moldy currency,
a hitchhiker desperate to put away his thumb.
Because trips should not issue one to suffer--
no, they should be well-rounded and smooth,
not like, say, the carapace of an arboreal beetle.
That first sore came as a banal transfiguration;
that of a taxicab fronting my property,
a stalwart set of wheels archly pure
with no intent to rule--merely to transport.
Yet, like some auto ghetto entrapment,
it decided, with a rarefied translucence
perceived, perhaps, by heavenly mechanics
bent on mechanical misfortune,
to sputter and cough, to chance freedom,
to tantalize with the promise of conveyance,
yet then excise all pent-up expectation
by birthing in horrible stall,
by frothing as non-organic madness,
savoring the lame staid of listlessness.
This was no cup of flowers.
The driver radioed for backup, of course,
and soon the asphalt horizon disgorged a cab
which gladly married me sans shudder and gasp.

A discarded pouch of cherry tobacco,
the odor of body promoting sweat
socks and cabbage--yet movement;
I was not futureless.
Yet then, electrifying my carefree imagination,
lurking like some stray pariah eager to sack
the slightest inclination of my heartfelt excursion,
a tractor-trailer jackknifed,
forcing us into a ditch.

Ah the gnaw and rankle of mishap,
the snap of mischance as jets scored the sky
in modern mocking, silver streaking seraphim
bound for ports unknown as I, shaken yet whole,
clawed clean from broken cab only to be tried again,
as if through special dispensation of cruel antagonists,
by a sinkhole in the making.


40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
12-13-14