Too Many Horses

Automobiles owned,
driven and reacted to,
starting with the one
that ran over my dog,
but not limited to,
includes this mortal list
of mechanical turmoil:

One 1965 Ford Mustang,
which my dad owned
as a shiny Great Society driver.
We put ice in the air conditioner
and it melted into cold air
from Texas to Arizona.

One green Oldsmobile station wagon,
my mom's, which we drove from Dallas
to the far west corner of Wyoming
right at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
into the denoument of a late 70s green bomb,
a handover in high school. Mark Hirte,
my so-called neighborhood friend,
put dog shit on my windshield once,
but I forgave him after he died
in a restaurant robbery.

I pass by all apparently random,
thoughtless acts. Not my job
to write people up for transitional,
indescretions.

One highly efficient blue Toyota Corolla,
four-door, another hand me down,
which I drove to college in Arizona,
then to a grisly death toward a U2 show,
where the real streets have no name,
then got married, went off the edge
of the financial world. Oblivion bound,
oh, the vast emptiness I have found.

One hitchhike out of that desert,
home in somebody else's white truck,
the wind in our hair, grit in our teeth.
In other people's cars I get careless and free.
Though, at times, my century makes me
go for the brake on the passenger's side.

Hard to trust when your are co-commuting
on the drag strip of fools.

One series of turnover cars, gas guzzlers,
four-door, family friendly, snow weary,
lacerated dents over one wheel well,
chains coming apart in a storm,
the motor a drum of pain on the paint.

One red Nissan truck, a mighty steel stead,
drove me from shifty Phoenix to New England,
out of danger I, the rising Phoenix, out of danger,
into trouble, into a world of need.

One silver Datsun, sporty, or so I believed,
kept me well until the ghost in the machine,
the Kachina spirit of my dead mother,
blew a motor for lack of oil. Death to husk,
no oil to very little soil. Sold it for one-hundred
single dollar bills.

All the high-end hijinks
of Porches and Jags,
all rented to decive me, so I bought
a Volkswagon Rabbit, with plates
that rang, "Live free or die!" May oui!
Part of my mapped-out plan for eternity.
Bought it for two hundred dollars
as an act of rebellion against
the smog-belching stink.

One Taurus, circa '94,
fast as my over-boiled underhood,
forty miles one way to work,
a lifetime to get back,
the stereo blasting a skin
to shield me from the world,
until the day that I,
a red bull in a colonial china shop,
got too many horses spinning
in my head.

Oh, the cosy little hobbit hole
expectations of me.

One two-thousand dollar Honda Civic,
belching smoke because, truthfully,
I know nothing about engines,
only the high-beam up ahead.

Now I have to fix it. That's my responsibility.
The heart burns fuel, and it's expensive,
the engine wears down with each little decision,
each bump, each turn, cracking the crankcase,
chipping the paint around the chrome,
the crunch of each microbe
cracking the windshield
in a terrifying roar
only mites can hear,
the mirror getting dull,
dislodged, dangerously so.

Then the door handle breaks.

I mean, it's cheap stuff, this flesh,

The tires will eventually go flat, or worse,
and before you are there, here, or anywhere,
this thing, this life is just a shell of scars,
reminders of cautionary tales to tell.





Wellington Station

I saw you across
the commuter aisle
twitching and huffing
at Wellington Station.

I, too, am a loser
in the war. I lay
down my sword.
Set my auto alight.
Left it a funereal husk,
just a memory
to the challenges
of sunny October days.

Be still, my brother,
my angel of anxiety.
I see you gasping,
reading the news,
oh so careful
about what you touch,
what we all touch.
We meet in common
places of terror, our
shared communiques...

Oh veteran.
Oh war lord;
I lay down my arms,
I comply, I let go,
I ride smoothly
into the inner-city
bowels of tension
and glittering dreams.

Then I will take on the attire
of Napolean's three-pointed hat.
I will curtsy, bend, that is,
into the sweet reflection
of what a peaceful city
wants to be.

The war news is hard,
ubiqitous as pearls and steel
and mobile phones.
My train runs silently,
beneath the stars and stripes
of all conquering heroes.

The Bunker Hill spire
is muted through glass
running by in the opposite,
direction. I descend
down the catwalk
of morbid hell. Silence
encloses me in a lightless
pipe of dread.

I am a monster.
I confess it all.
Just this, please,
after this night,
on the battlefield
of Boston,
willl you let me
safely caress
my love, my sweet
daughter's face, or,
anything else I can keep
perfect or sane
for a whole rail yard
of days.

Let me retreat
with my bag of games,
my pen, my spear,
my telefrantic machines.
Let me walk, just one more time
into the target valley
of technology.

And though I will breathe
the very microbes of hell,
through pile drives, tunnels,
lost wheels and poisened wells,
the endless botched catacomb
of the world you made:
Oh Wellington, allow my return
to Corsica, even Elbe, I will allow.

Where I can be at peace.
With who? Myself, at least,
as I wait for the night
to fall upon your victory.
If Napoleon could stoop
this far into the refrigerator,
he would have become
a suburban monk like me.