23 August 2009

Off-White Noise; Actually, More of a Bone-White Noise or Ecru

It, the speedometer, says ninety miles an hour but
it must be lying because things aren't moving at all.
From where I sit,
things couldn't possibly be moving.

Off center, as other things move faster, they compress,
they contract around themselves and
all appearances become skewed, off-kilter,
and what is not moving is stretched-out, expanded,
and takes up more room than it actually needs.
Or is it the other way around?

What I see when I look through the glass at the front of the car
are the things that look like the people I used to see but distorted.
I point at them, I wave, but whatever they have become
doesn't seem to recognize me.
I guess they see something else. And
I wonder what it might be? Perhaps
a shooting star, a what-do-you-call-it, a meteor?
A piece of burning something unrecognizable in a cocoon of flame?

Now it, the speedometer, says one hundred and ten but
things are still the same.
What is going on here? I ask myself
but it is an echo of something I'd heard before,
a sound I’d just caught up to hearing.
I wonder when this will stop? I ask myself,
long after it already has.

3 comments:

  1. terrific. What state the car stopped in.

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  2. as the car approaches the speed of light, you are inside/outside the car at once and find yourself waving to yourself and see yourself, with blank expression, not waving back; or, do you find yourself back at the breakfast table reading the morning news with a gnawing urge to go for a drive as the car engine cools in the garage?

    ps: i feel queasy now and must lie down

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