...or actually any writer who can make me identify with both the protagonist and antagonist of a story or poem, as in this -- I am both the person who would like to jerry-rig a jackass horn, but also the jerk who deserves to be honked at with it. Check it out and see if you feel the same way. This originally appeared in the lit mag Poetry. See LH instructor John Brehm this Friday, 7PM at 910 Arts (910 Santa Fe) at our Buzz event: Split Personalities, an evening of poetry, music, and revelry.
GETTING WHERE WE'RE GOING
Surfeit of distance and the wracked mind waiting,
nipping at itself, snarling inwardly at strangers.
If I had a car in this town I’d
rig it up with a rear bumper horn,
something to blast back at the jackasses
who honk the second the light turns green.
If you could gather up all the hornhonks
of just one day in New York City,
tie them together in a big brassy knot
high above the city and honk
them all at once it would shiver
the skyscrapers to nothingness, as if
they were made of sand, and usher
in the Second Coming. Christ would descend
from the sky wincing with his fingers
in his ears and judge us all
insane. Who’d want people like us
up there yelling at each other, trashing
the cloudy, angelic streets with our
candywrappers and newspapers and coffeecups?
Besides, we’d still be waiting for
the next thing to happen in Heaven,
the next violin concerto or cotton candy
festival or breathtaking vista to open
beneath our feet, and thinking this place
isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be,
and why in hell does everybody
want to get here? We’d still be
waiting for someone else to come
and make us happy, staring
through whatever’s in front of us,
cursing the light that never seems to change.
