Just Sam

Wordle 945 4/6

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My poems are short

Short as my patience for the hated task of planning, scheduling the various disparate parts of my days and weeks like flowing cars and trucks and semis all careening into something as elegant as a traffic jam in my mind.

A traffic jam on my calendar, if I wrote one.

I hate driving

Not for the traffic, no, I actually enjoy the unexpected navigation through a field of surprisingly condensed motor vehicles.

No I hate driving for the unnatural between man and earth, sitting in cramped refrigerators traveling at speeds that would cause injury if there came a sudden stop. Down lanes and through thoroughfares of gray asphalt and metal rails, faster and faster, as trees in the distance appear to move slower and slower. I wonder what kinds of trees those are.

My mind careens down those dusty trails and round the evergreen barriers that encapsulate the green valley below...

STOP!

there's a semi turned sideways on the otherwise pristine motorway. A moment more and I might've joined it, a moment more and this all might be over ...

I'm not a good driver, my poems are short.

My lack of imagination cuts them off before they get interesting, like a semi on the turnpike. No, not lack of imagination, too much imagination, like a pile up of cars without a policeman to direct the flow into something orderly and useful.

Here the cars lay scattered, cars upon cars, boxes upon boxes, without a clear place to put them, stacking upwards to the sky in an undulating tower, towering over and cluttering up my bedroom. "You need to clean those up," Mom said. She was right of course, so I started, and I stopped. There was a semi on the highway, and I couldn't move, I didn't know which car had the right of way.

This is better than driving fast at least, at least without speed maybe no one will die. No one should die. Death at all is tragic, my bedroom is a mess.

I'm not a good son, I'm not a good driver, my poems are short.

There was disappointment in her voice, her voice inside my head, that called to me from beyond the world. She caught me staring at the trees, looking too long and looking to see, and longing to see a world where we all might be free. Free from death, free from highways and boxes and refrigerated machines. Machines careening faster than my imagination can proceed.

Always my problem, things happen much too quick, like tumbling boxes, like tumbling trucks, like tumbling thoughts that tend to get stuck in a traffic jam of the mind. Move the wrong box and my room is more messy, not less.

I'm not a good human, I don't know what to do, best slow and wait for a policeman. A policeman to clean my room. A policeman to write my poem. A policeman to direct the way for my thoughts to exit this jam.

Where are you? Are you eating? Have you read?

Are you alone? Gone walking? Well rested?

Do you miss me?

Where am I? Eat a snack Read a book

And breath

Don't be alone Go running Get sleep

I miss you

Don't be alone Find your friend Someone to confide

And breath

Each breath taken Each run ran Each night slept Every snack

Can't I just tell you why I've been lonely all these years?

I just tell you why the car was neglected, and my bank account was overdrawn last month

Just tell you why I can't understand how to be the man you want me to be

Tell you why the son you always wanted wasn't interested in baseball or cars, or passing along your genes

Two roads converged in a yellow wood

I on one side, he on the other

We walked we talked

We sat together

He walked I talked

He stood I danced

I ran he sat

He crawled I stopped

I yelled he cried

He sat I sat

We danced, we danced

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood