Poem-A-Day #55 : The Memory is Enormous

The Memory is Enormous

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I sit in the dark of the room
I see the lights from a police car turning
red          then blue          then

The books on the shelves seem hesitant

.
If I say that I loved you - that it really fucks me up to think about it
and that ends a season before it begins -

Will someone please turn off the alarms

In the street there is a car and it has run into something and that something is an echo

.
There is that drive to the airport
An image of all the wrong - spinning in some pocket of time

like a goddamn metaphor for everything and yet - there it is

Life          caught by the grill of an SUV on the highway
murdered like some cow -

I raise the blackjack and I think about what body to place under it

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The dark is carbon paper

And the trapped object is a dog - wild or otherwise

The body of which - is cartwheeling

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Here is what happened:

          The dog ran across three lanes of highway
          Barely making it - I almost was the one -
          And I caught my breath as it reached the median and I prayed as if I believed in God that it would stop and sit and be but -

          It made it two more lanes - this dog - running like something was chasing it
          The grill of the SUV
          Silver - breaking the light like water

          And the dog's body was unhinged

          It spun like a top - like some stuck
                    perpetually spinning thing

                    I know because I began to scream and whenever I drive by it - the cars slow down to look - to see what this endless black hole in reality could possibly be

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And what I'm not talking about is that I was picking you up at the airport

That this is so difficult

That it was some kind of warning - that it was the last time

          I was driving towards you and the lights were flashing
red          then blue          then

And instead of stopping I kept screaming and crying and screaming and I was driving and then I saw you and your eyes and then the moment and the moment in duplicate and then the moment repeating until the end of the universe

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I was waiting in the dark for the lights to stop so I could go to sleep
So that the books would stop holding their breath