8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)

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Drivinga poem

 by

Emmett Michie

8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)

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I'm trying to remembernot a dream

 but lying here in the morningfeels that way:

Elegy

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 On the bridge, leaving the city

the cables and supports just wentup

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 It's not alot to go on

: the glow off the instrument panelyour cigarettesthe six-pack, half an ounce, box of 

Dexatrimssmall collection of tapes

and this stuff that rushes at youmisses

and isn't gone

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attached to nothing

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 I remember remembering better

than anything else

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 I am not blessed

I have beenrandom kliegs of white lightin places

My year, my moment

this fear thatI was

How much do you get?

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 Two Hundred miles of fog

-- no metaphor --from 109th St. to here

 Just two cones of headlightsand the fog

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 The Golden State Parkway

was my first great lossI saw the sign just in timenot to be able to turn

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 Forget it

Next exitGet off and get lost

again and again and again

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 Where is the bag?

you know I think about thatWhere are the true souveniers?It seems to me touristshave been out and arounddriving me

and left all their postcards

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 The mind behind the times

-- the line is unclearThe windows are better:all those mornings' lightand the faces all those faces evershown

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 we

are a comfortable fitin the mornings we shoot for,we trywhen the light is thick and swimmingin

everything we know

All these years:stuffing your bra in your purse,

 finding my keys your beat Datsun fading off at thelight

we have our

vampire moments

But I'm gonna find a cornerbuild something in sleep that

half-awake and you’re still breathingeats atlike a dream

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 Who was looking? I

hadn't even turnedIt happens like thatit “transpires”

across two points

lightning betweenminarets

-- I don't know--

a sudden vision of James Whalemachines

and the deadare brought

 back to life

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 The kind of night you would see

a demon or ghost by the side of theroad

probably hitchhiking

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 I lost my route again

some turn I should have madeand never saw

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 Sloatsburg

EllenvilleOvidCohocton

An exchange in the dark 

I creep up on too fastAnd the numbers don’t make itit’s gone

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 Because this is not a story

I begin againwith a vision of Frances, pausedlike a doefor a second in my headlights.

And then she ran

down the streetdown the sidewalk 

up the stairsup the coast and to Boston

summer gone

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 Ever find yourself 

going too fast beyond what you could seefor a second in your left lightStopping nowherein the quiet

in a place you think you have thegraceto move aroundAnd half-way through the K turn

you just want to stop and sleep

and remember it betterthan any place you had to go

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 Light love

—isn’t that what they call it?“lightlove”

I think that means it’s easier to

carryaround

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 I got carried.

I got called out.The time to playand hands.

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 No dreams

a song as long and volatileas gasoline

well-soaked rags I tore from oursheets

and tiedeach morning to the night before

like a kite

I raninto the wind

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 I wonder what’s happening to the

worldHow’s it doing out therewhere someone can see

Everything that was real and hard

to meis shrouded

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 I want to praise the dead

 but my dead are small and roundsomehowlike pebbles

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 She did know me.

I wish I’d shaved.I wish I wasn’t so cavalier lookingin my beautiful scarf, boots,and new beard,driving an expensive (borrowed)

new car.

She was the first personI found in the place,

peering into the window of a door.She “had nothing to do with me.”About that, she was clear.

I tried to tell her.

I’d come two hundred miles.She was even more terrifiedof the stranger.

I got back in the car.

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 This gauze bandage

that moves around meon the back wards of the nightwhat is that?

 but tomorrow and tomorrow andtoday

and this little bit beaming out of my headlights—what is it? 45 feet?such a little way to see

in such a wide wide bandaged world

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 Did it make you strong?

kneading the porcelain until the bubbles broke,taking something back in your hands—It’s not all you did in there. I

know

You see I gotta build something tooin the end

as hard and brittle as stone

I have a fantasy, sadand as happy as a good lonesomesong

when you hadn’t expected to hearoneDid it make you strong?

(You didn’t die. Youtold meYou don’t know how that

changed the news)

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 I should have brought more music

somethingto push open this world

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 Why

am I trying to rememberyou and this stuff 

Duff fires

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 Wisps

curled from the door I left open behind meBy the lobby, whole ghosts

I just drove