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The wreck of a Memphis-Atlanta Greyhound (Free verse) by zodiac [For Dovina, as always.]
One casualty - fortunate, as these things go.
(The oncoming driver, drunk or overtired,
thinking about his wife, a song or nothing,
escaped unhurt.) Inevitable, they said.
Common enough, at any rate. Bound to happen once
to any of us, given world and time enough.
And always more-or-less the same. Except
the flying man. He'd been in that rear lavatory.
Freshening up, I imagine. At least, he seemed
the freshening-up sort. Probably used the phrase
"God-fearing" once in his life, uncynically.
Or "Old fart" (also self-reference.) There's a kind
who use bus lavatories, who call them lavatories -
the humble, endless opiners, insufficiently
loved for what they are: white streaks of light
waiting. Grandfather-puffy. Or else a professor,
a doctor, maybe. Surely, there was some
ideology involved. Some extra lift, shot him - what,
four times himself down the aisle, a thrilling upward
half a parabola. The downward too, then. But,
before that, the windshield; so as much of him
continued up as fell (if you believe
ballistics end in that instant: the soul transforms
into an up-falling rain of pebbled glass.)
I can tell you, the physics of the thing are suspect.
For in the time he took to clear the dash, I saw
him wide-eyed soaring - startled, yes, yet lit
with something you'd call beatific but for belonging
to a man with his pants half-buckled. I had time
enough to think how he must see us there:
all curtailed somehow, collapsed ingloriously into
our facing seatbacks, babies smothered, a shameful
akimbo of limbs like sleepers' - our own truncating
ideologies holding us back, he'd know. But he -
Man! He was the one flying.
Up the ladder:
Childhood memory
Down the ladder:
A most malodorous mockurance
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 8.625
Posted: December 13, 2004 6:00 AM PST; Last modified: December 16, 2004 6:03 AM PSTWeighted score: 5.9749126 Overall Rank: 1338 The following users have marked this poem on their favorites list:
Comments:
Furny...
Nicely done. I feel like it ended a little bit like the thought was pushed through a steel mesh somehow.
And the use of "akimbo" completely pulled me out of what was a very nice and interest-keeping ride. I have no suggestion on how to fix that ending, so I leave it in your capable hands.
Good grief, how have I missed this until now?
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It could not have been written during the accident, but after it, making the title not only too long, but confusing.
Comma before âgivenâ in versa 2.
âalways more-or-less the sameâ seems neither accurate, nor logically sound or even a line that says anything. Besides, the thought is expressed above.
ââGod-fearingâ once in his life, uncynically.â Doesnât say much. Everyone does it once. Try âoften.â
The man who was thrown was on the bus, and the narrator was on the bus, else how could the narrator develop so detailed an opinion of him or know he had been in the lavatory. Yet the man flew over the dash (Do busses have dashes?) and through the windshield of the bus, while all of the other passengers were only pressed forward against seatbacks. The narrator had to have been sitting near the front of the bus to see the manâs flight after he penetrated the windshield, and remained in his seat during the flight, or at least not far from it, to notice the manâs expression. The thrown man probably landed on the car involved in the head-on collision (I assume it was head-on), yet no mention of it. When a bus hits a car head-on, and the driver of the car is not hurt badly, then the collision happened at low speed, which would cause little impact to the much-heavier bus. Okay, if you say so, but it seems the physics should be presented more believably if you want us to consider the philosophy. Saying, âthe physics of the thing are suspect.â Isnât enough.
âup-falling rain of pebbled glassâ Since youâve opened this ethereal aspect, this line could be related to the thrown manâs character as you developed it above, bring cause to the result, bringing relevance to the collision. Just an idea.
Incidentally, the reason I'm defending this poem so much is I think it's the first thing I've written in ages that doesn't contradict itself every three lines. You'd have done better to start with an earlier one, I think.
1) It could if time was somehow telescoped, which is what the proem proposes, anyway. No, I don't know how that would happen. Some kind of device that shoots figs at near-lightspeed in a direction roughly opposite the bus's motion, maybe. Diagrams to follow.
Also, I'll change the title, which I don't like much.
2) Sure, why not? I find there's missing punctuation all over the place.
3) I don't understand. Or at any rate, I respectfully disagree, especially about the logically sound part.
4) Not uncynically, they don't. But point taken.
5) The narrator didn't see the descent; he just guesses.
Anyway, there are many ways the impact could have been slow enough to only make a man fly while leaving everybody else unharmed. Considering that this is based on a real event (in Jordan, not the U.S., and I was the flying man), you'll just have to take my word for it.
6) The impression's not the narrator's, it's his idea of the opinion of someone who believes in that stuff (i.e., the flying man), so I don't think he (the narrator) is required much to explain.
Also - six lengths of someone's body was too long for a bus, unless the guy was, like, four feet tall or something.
This is the longest comment I've ever posted on one of my own poems. I'm mildly ashamed.