Tuesday, September 07, 2010

From Whence the Spirit Grumbles

I called you from
the road

from

someplace far out
in my desolate
little universe
behind the wheel

I was out of audio books
to serve as opiates
and distract me

from

the lack of solace
I was feeling, the
unsatisfactory time
spent, the slipped
gears of a life gone
down into a gully and
disappeared

from

the planet of four in
the morning, chilly
pre-dawn of northern
Nevada

where

cell service is like
the shrunken habitat
of an animal close to
extinction, with wide
places of

nothing; where

I pace in the parking
lot, explaining myself
to your answering
machine

that

you don't know how to
use, and never check,
but only unplug to
get the flashing red
light to abate

that

western ideal of
leaving the disease
alone, so long as the
symptoms will go away
for a while, and
that is good enough
for us

so

my words travel across
the wide, barren places
to ultimately die without
having been heard by
anyone but the bleary
eyed trucker

who

sits on the fender of
an old International
Harvester, slowly
chewing down his second
egg and bacon muffin

while

I confess to machinery
and rail across the
cell tower networks
bouncing my fruitless
words from satellites

until

it comes back around to
the wheel once more, and
the long drive, and the
dreary eventual
destination.

Patrick M. Tracy
9/7/2010

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Intriguing! You're ideas come from "everywhere" that's for sure. Reinforces my feelings of discomfort with electronic communications by telephone. M

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