Thursday, February 23, 2012

Motor Cycle

for Dave Dikitolia

At 200 miles per hour,
the corporate grind
becomes fluid, a snake skin
sloughed from the moment
and vaporized in the tail pipe.

Some might say you're
running from ghosts
or loneliness and shame.
But you don't want vanishing
points, as much as speed
of light to cross over
that line, forgive the ghosts
and come back
in one piece.

Some might even say you
want to die, but that's a
friend too well known--
mother of cancer--
brother crashed on a
highway of no return--
and father, father of death
itself, tearing out your guts
with a shotgun in his mouth.

At 200 miles per hour,
you know death
is not fate but a chance
to beat the odds, the time
when mistakes aren't
the end, but a day to work
and make it all right again.

At 200 miles per hour, the road
is a razor that'll cut you in half
with just an engine and inertia
pulling you into yourself, and
you feel free of gravity.

(c) copyright 2012 Charles David Miller. All rights reserved.

15 comments:

  1. death is not fate but a chance to beat the odds...whew...daddy with the shot gun and mother of cancer were both striking lines man...never got to 200 but at 135 the world moves fast...the road a razor...and gravity...nice close...

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  2. I (still) have a turbo MR2 and I've been up to that speed but it's not a place I want to stay especially with my old lady reflexes. It certainly is a move to the wild side. The poem absolutely explores clarity in the midst of chaos, fiercely trying to make sense in a senseless universe. It fulfills the aim of your blog title completely. Excellent stuff.

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    1. The motorcycle is a Suzuki Hayabusa, top speed of 194 though Dave heard stories of +200 mph. Thank you for noting the epigraph on the blog and its link to a theme in the poem.

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  3. Wow, I'm not sure what to say except wow. The first stanza made the poem personal because I could relate, then my life was redefined as I experienced the words. Excellent

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  4. Some really powerful lines in there, "brother crashed on a / highway of no return-- / and father, father of death / itself, tearing out your guts / with a shotgun in his mouth." and a vivid image. This one also stood out to me, "you know death / is not fate but a chance / to beat the odds" as did the razor image in the last stanza.

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  5. a wonderful write charles with some hit-me-in-the-stomach lines... brought me back to my teenage years..i had a boy friend who worked for a car rental company and sometimes i joined him when he brought one of these really fast cars back...and went 200 miles per hour...flying between life and death indeed..and i didn't care much at that time..

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    1. Thank you, Claudie, for your kind comment. I've never been anywhere near that speed, maybe up to 100 mph. So the poem might be a bit of living vicariously. :) It does in some way, though not consciously when I wrote it, deal with the myth of the Biker as well as the love machines supposedly so characteristic of Americans. But the thing that motivated me to write it was the human story of a guy who works for a small company, with huge stress in his job, and a personal history that could break your heart with horror. This story itself grew organically, I think, out of my own wrestlings with death, pain, soul and so on. In all of my "portraits" however, I have striven to maintain the integrity of the person I write about, attempting never to judge or project my self onto them so thatbthey become just a pale reflection of me. Thanks so much, as always, for reading this.

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  6. Thrilling. Especially:-
    At 200 miles per hour,
    you know death
    is not fate but a chance
    to beat the odds, the time
    when mistakes aren't
    the end, but a day to work
    and make it all right again.

    This crystallised it all for me.

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  7. You made the experience of travelling 200 mph vivid for me. Well written poem with intensity of images mixed with feelings. I'd rather drive the speed limit and live. This was enough for me:

    At 200 miles per hour, the road
    is a razor that'll cut you in half

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  8. Excellent writing Charles. The 200 stanzas are incredibly strong. I don't know what it is about numerals written out this way, when appearing alongside letters, they just have an effect on me. My mind always races to find connections with symbols all the while finding the numeral aesthetics so wonderful. The other stanzas really are powerful, with talk of fear, death's imminence, chancing fate, ending each stanza with an image that engrains itself, the shotgun, and disembowelment- granted I read it as metaphoric, but the fact it can be interpreted in dual makes it even stronger, and in the other stanza, the notion of a vanishing point as compared with light speed, not sure if there is any one image that can be taken from that, but it sticks with the reader, where it can be an image unique to them- wonderful job, thanks.

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    1. Thank you, Fred, for your comment. That last image about vanishing points is something I considered taking out, but it is imagistic, though of the imagination. I was hoping the reader could think cinematically at this point, since that is images like this that film does well. This is not saying that I executed it correctly, just providing some background. As always, I am grateful for your stopping by.

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  9. This is wonderful. So psychically accurate and incisive and beautifully rendered. K.

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  10. there's so much power of acceleration in this, wow! glad i got to it finally!

    esp liked,

    "you don't want vanishing
    points, as much as speed
    of light to cross over
    that line"

    i've always liked most concepts built 'round the idea of speed of light, nice ;-)

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    1. I'm glad that came across, Adan. When you write these things they sound good but you wonder how they sound or form in someone else's head. It's kind of a verbal formulation, and there are allusions to relativity theory, as little as I understand of it.

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  11. From Valerie (@annehedonia13) via Twitter:

    @shralec re: "Motor Cycle" ~ Intensely visual and cinematic. I can imagine the images in the rider's head and the pressures in his life competing with the increasing speed of the bike on the highway attempting to outrun them. Visceral too, the scenarios of speed, death and the road. There's a mythic quality here, and though the depiction of the rider may be a specific portrait, he seems to me to be a kind of everyman.
    http://tl.gd/g83otb

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