Poem: Condo Near the 210

 

Condo Near the 210

 

the back of his skull

hummed from freeway vibrations,

as it rested against the bedroom wall;

the worst from big trucks,

and now and then a torn honk.

eight lanes of dozens of lives

every few seconds,

none of them able to cure or even witness

his proximate depression,

only hundreds of feet away.

so many close-by people

swift as comets in cubes,

gone in the dim-lit night,

though touching the back of his skull

in ways he felt were personal,

sometimes monstrous,

sometimes teary or tender.

 

he would never interact so intimately

with any of them again,

these unseen souls in their cars,

who seemed to beckon, sometimes,

with their faltering secrets,

whispered in a rumble’s aftermath.

for a half second--which was

as long as any other moment in the cosmos--

there was this human connection,

and yet doomed never to catch,

sharing, yes, but only the truth

that other people actually existed:

they moved, they travelled in cars,

and through that fact reached out,

vibrating a wall,

to strum a lonely man’s timeline.

 

 

 

======================================

8/22 ... "honk" replaces "wail"

6/28/24 .. fixed typo

6/21 ... "beckon" replaces "reached out"

Happy Juneteenth.  Let us celebrate freedom while we can.  It may all soon be taken away and replaced with dictatorship.  The whole world watches as the USA approaches a Presidential election, one that will decide the fate of the entire global civilization.  It's evil versus ... our hope to be better and better, approaching good.