To a would-be mechanic
He failed to document the incident, that much was true. And the snide gleam in every eye that heard his story could not be helped. He found no fault with the listeners. Had they only been closer, even intimate—there was proof enough.
Early on—before the country blurred into a cityscape and childhood adventures shifted from the easy green of ground to treetop into hard-edged corners and asphalt burns—an older brother, Burton, stumbled upon a stray dog that had stumbled upon wild pig tusks from the bloody look of it. He was the only body in earshot which translated to restraining attendant as Burton tended to the beast's ruin. Less of a mystery if he would ever bother to ask the reason, Burton had, since adolescence, never left his residence without a first aid kit (antiseptic gauze, sterile bandages, tape, sewing needles: small and large, sterilized thread, isopropyl alcohol (90%), scissors, hydrogen peroxide, 1000 count match box (strike anywhere), Bartlet's book of quotations). The dog ceased struggling against Elmer unable to break free of his grip and chose instead to bite and claw. When Burton finished his healing ministrations upon the mended animal, which slumped away to live or die under an impressive bush of holly, he tended Elmer's varied, not-quite-to-the-marbled-meat lacerations.
That story could not be told without gasps and twinklings of genuine empathy but change the feral canine to a retired school bus and warm smiles chilled. "Of course," they guffawed, "a wild animal will fight you, even if you're helping it. But a bus! A bus isn't reticent to have it's oil changed!"
Elmer's scars etched the scene of a more complicated reality where inanimate objects enjoyed rich, inner lives and were no better disposed to dispatch the tumult of sensibility than their animate counterparts. Oil change. Oil changes.
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His first and only tanka, Elmer was unaware of his tacit participation in a decadently long, exceptionally perfumed tradition of poetic singularity. He had not, in point of fact, intended to write a poem. Elmer, in desperation at the panopticonic Berlin Wall of disbelief spanning even as the horizon all points within purview, ran to the higher ground of a solid bulleted list. The structural integrity of this attempt notwithstanding, Elmer never revisited his work, bothered to number the syllables, amend the list.
All five of the filters properly lubricated, pre-filled (or left empty) and screwed in he crawled from beneath the hulking mechana, moving slowly to conserve what residue of strength remained to run the engine and insure the result serviceable. It ran. It roared. It rumbled sussurant and slow.
Inside his recession-aftermath apartment the off-white walls gleamed practically eggshell. Perhaps an angel of the lord was materializing, message of import—no; word of thanks on the burning lips of the living coal filled mouth: the Metatron itself booming with gratitude and the origins of gratitude. Likely, though, these were the outer-edges of DMT coached passage from life through death. Mortified by shame he failed to visit a hospital. Memories of half-gleaned medical treatment watching Burton proved insufficient. Septic, yet unstatistically spry, Elmer raised the still good arm in greeting to his iridescent visitor or commonplace living room; utterly ordinary except for the smiling, slumping, sliding, prostrate mass: casual as a coat discarded in the haste of impatiently awaited sex.
