yeah, patrick, i'm afraid an hour in traffic is like
being in a bad film which wouldn't have happened
except i spent all day working on what i wanted to and
so procrastinated my errands until rush hour, so a
snap, since i came back snapping and wrote this
observations of rush hour in about ten minutes, not
counting the typing in later, i have no idea what the
soup's like, hopefully no ***SPAM***in it! cheers, r
--- Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Snap?rebecca -that more like a full length film
> Italian wedding soup sounds
> appealing!!
> Cheers p
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue
> relating to poetry and
> poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of Rebecca Seiferle
> Sent: 02 March 2006 05:08
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: *** SPAM *** Re: snapshot corrected
>
> Foo, the lines are still broken, but never mind,
> just
> figure the one or two word lines are orphans,
>
> best,
>
> R
> --- Rebecca Seiferle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Sorry, but the lines broke short, and since it's
> > long
> > anyway, here's the correction.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Rebecca
> >
> >
> >
> > war everywhere, war viral in the veins, the
> ganglia
> > gang,
> > for whether it's the Toyota from Maine
> > going 60 down 20, the two-lane that must be the
> main
> > street for every mill town all the way to Canada,
> > that nearly clips me off at the knees when I run
> > across to the post office, or the minivan pulling
> > out
> > of the Spring
> > Company (and why do people like to drive those
> > things
> > which waddle and surge like wheeled-bathtubs, slow
> > as houseboats churning their engines to get their
> > pontoons
> > somewhere!) into the gap between clotted cars,
> > though
> > the driver's forgotten that traffic travels in the
> > other
> > direction too, and so has to screech for a halt
> > when it's a city bus going through, her mouth
> > yells shit! at the bus, her cab fills
> > with other expletives, and I, reading her lips,
> > wonder
> > how many
> > die, cursing, like this, as the pedestrians take
> > their
> > courage
> > in their hands and dart out,
> > many wobbly, arthritic, cane tapping (so many
> > permanently injured in the birthplace of the
> > industrial
> > revolution) or drunken steps
> > like the guy inspired at the local bar to go for
> > broke
> > and cross to the gas station for lotto tickets.
> Most
> > have their ears glued to the news, every cochlea
> > glued to a cel, another voice directing them like
> > divine or demonic intervention, their steering
> > mechanisms
> > making a haze of blunderbuss oblivion
> > surrounding every head with the halo of certainty
> > over what matters--once drivers drove blind
> > into the sun, as if it were an eternal
> destination,
> > (like that man impaled on his own steering wheel
> > when he rear-ended a runaway truck carrying
> > watermelons,
> > their green rinds split open, too, all over the
> > highway)
> > now everyone's in conference calls, business
> > meetings, pagers,
> > newspapers on the dash, always listening to
> > a transmitted voice so she or he don't feel alone
> > the here and now, here and now where
> > they're counting on us, even me, atom among other
> > atoms,
> > to be awake, to stop in time, to take care of them
>
> > as they attend to elsewhere. And we do, most
> > of the time, we do, even the old vet
> > with the faded support-our-troops ribbon stickered
> > on his trunk who's going 15 at a crawl and brakes
> > hard,
> > because he's spotted some younger (well, most
> > of them are, comparatively) woman and though
> > she won't be crossing the street or even reach the
> > curb
> > for another minute or two, he's got to take
> > chivalry's
> > abrupt stop, be the one who throws down
> > his gears to let her cross the street. Expecting
> as
> > much
> > from the warning of his wobbling wobble, I brake
> > and hope the row of two ton dominoes behind me
> > is awake enough to notice, to keep
> > from cascading in a six car fender
> > bender,richocheting
> > all the way back to the impending
> > 5:10 where some, to save time, have stopped on the
> > tracks,
> > and so we make room for each other's random
> > bumpings, bumped, bumpkins halted at random like
> > electrons
> > steering along our particular orbits along a
> common
> > electrical path, and hoping not to collide on get
> > stuck
> > in some other driver's sticky threaded karma pit,
> > and I wonder if that's what she meant, Nina Simone
> > singing "human kindness is overflowing, and I
> think
> > it's going to rain," in that voice-oh, that voice,
>
> > such a surge bowl of low moan and honey light
> > makes a bee humming of even these end-of-the-day-
> > worst -hour-for-it, errands, as if my circuituous
> > paths were a minor liminal of chaos theory, so
> many
> > years
> > and no wrecks, so many speeds and no tickets,
> > and knowing it's mostly luck, and perhaps that's
> > what they all count on-jumping out from between
> > two cars to jaywalk 5 lanes of rush hour
> traffic-or
> > the luck or the sharpness and dullness
> > of others, surely, someone will pay attention
> > to me! each atom thinks, as if
> > we were all atoms, constellating out of some
> > maternal
> > bed that held us in our hands, imagine, as if the
> > universe
> > were mama, or as if we had murky eyes sharp for
> > unseen
> > movement, and me too, what else is it that shrewd
> > slow down, for no reason, flying at 80 on the
> > motorcycle
> > at night just as I approached the crest of a small
> > hill,
> > just long enough, just soon enough, before the
> mule
> > deer
> > jumped out of the sagebrush into the middle of the
> > asphalt,
> > time enough to stop and wonder, before veering
> away,
> > dumb luck, the same sort of luck of dodging
> bullets,
> > and hoping that nothing happens, that today
> > one doesn't see the man who sits in the grass and
> > watches
> > the blood spread like a strange ivy through the
> > fabric
> > of his shirt, the woman threaded with blood
> > wandering
> > dazed down the medium, o terrible vision when
> > I was five, and always war everywhere, always
> > war still, viral in the ganglia, and the nerves,
> > and still I'm rushing, always rushing home,
> > as if love were waiting with its words that might
> > make me cry, surge with tenderness, a sugar
> > volt melting, and say that it's over, the war
> > everywhere, always war still, viral in the ganglia
> > and the nerves in a world where Alice's Family
> > Dining
> > has pitched a sign on the corner we must all
> corner
> > by--
> > Italian wedding soup
> > (very popular here), $8.95 a quart today only--
> > yeah right, as fresh as last week--
> > oh my wiseacre voiceover that knows love's just
> > Alice's chalk screeching on slate, a good woman,
> > torn as she is, if there ever were an 'Alice',
> torn
> > between
> > leftovers for altruistic soup kitchens and trying
> to
> > make
> > the sale of the day in "Clock City," the
> birthplace
> > of the industrial revolution.
> >
> > Rebecca Seiferle
> > 11:57 March 1, 2006, Waltham MA
>
=== message truncated ===
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