poem

 IthacaOnce I finally left the islandOf Calypso the highway became an endless Series of off-ramps and mergingsEach exit sign an indecipherable medleyOf directional words — North and south, east and westFuture and past, here or now —All mixed up in inexplicable combinations That made no geographical sense The GPS on my phone showedOnly a red dot moving alongA single black line relative to nothing elseWhich is the definition Of going nowhere fast Time lysed itself from spaceWhile space moved on to whatever comes after time  Three minutes allegedly elapsedAccording to the digital display clockBut it felt like I ’d traveled to Corpus Christi And back and now was speeding along to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, next exit straight to hell. When I began to tickleThe edges of rumble stripsPanic set in and I had to pull overOn the shadowed shoulder under a bridge. Here, it got very cold and grayEverything solid blurredAnd the blur coalesced into strange rain That didn ’t make anything wet.Lines and shapes wobbled Then briefly flickered out of sight. I put the car in park, then driveThen park, then drive But it didn ’t matterNothing happened. Neither movement nor stillnessThe dashboard flickeredA sickly pale greenLike alien creatures Near the ocean ’s floorAnd it dawned on me —This frigid shiv of factdawned—That something awful had arrivedAm I ….. dead? I remember whisperingAnd th...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - Category: Surgery Authors: Source Type: blogs