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ODE TO DRIVING

Submitted by Eumolpus on Thu, 2017-04-13 16:10

Gone will be the wind in your hair on the open road
Down shifting the gears with the thrill of acceleration
Gone will be the many hours spent in daily idleness
Among swarms of metal boxes with bright red asses
For miles and miles like so many shiny arthropods
Gone are the sonic sounds of crude rock and roll
Danger and death always a breath away
Trapped in tightly drawn lanes keeping pace
In undeclared warfare of a steady stampede
To be the first out of the pack to reach the final exit
Gone the sleek chrome lines and bucket seats
Gone is cruise control and cameras in reverse gear
Gone is the windshield wipers’ metronomic drones
Gone the trucks howling in the trenches of traffic
Gone is the passing time of supreme meditation
Hands coiled to the wheel and eyes fused to the scenery

You young ones in a world unimaginable to us
Patiently watching videos on the robotic buses
Do not be so arrogant to dismiss that hundred years
We lived by fossil fuel cars and transformed
The landscape of the planet to accommodate us
Yes it was a folly and an unsustainable nuisance
Millions more glistening models every year
Sucking blood from below and filling the sky with soot
While so many died each hour in brutal trauma
On highways cluttered by roadkill and speed signs

But regretfully you can never know the feeling
When you put your foot on that gas petal and the car
Jumped out of nothingness to the next town
It was fun

Last few words: 
“ By 2025 driverless electric cars will start to take over transportation, and cars as we know them will be gone by 2050”
Editing stage: 
Editing - rough draft

Comments

Geezer

Fri, 2017-04-14 11:14

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that there will still be an environment to save, by the end of "cars as we know them".
I like this one. As was said to another poet here recently, I would prefer that some of those "Gones"
be gone. I know that are just so many ways to express "gone", but think it might be nice if you tried harder. I see that you gave it a go, but wish you had done a little bit more.
I have been an avid driver all of my adult life and I really can appreciate the emotions elicited by this poem. There is not much in this world that can compare to being in control of a machine like a car or motorcycle on the open road, through time and space. ~ Gee.
.

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Eumolpus

Fri, 2017-04-14 12:29

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Lately I've been reading a lot of beat poetry, especially from publications from City Lights by Ferlinghetti. Repeating a word or phrase at the start of a line over and over was in common usage back then by all those cats- Ferlinghetti used it a lot, Ginsberg like all the time (just look at Howl or Kaddish!) Voznesensky, Breton, Heissenbuttel, Bob Kaufman...Some poems are even entirely constructed in that style of repeating the first word or phrase.
So maybe the style just appealed to me as I was constructing the poem, and i decided to go with it. Perhaps it's a bit archaic, so I appreciate your comment. It is definitely true that we tend to absorb what we read and incorporate, just as in the way all art evolves. We all seek to work in our own unique styles, but no art is ever made in a vacuum.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

wesley snow

Mon, 2017-04-17 16:39

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Punctuation is the only suggestion I have. It is a tool of the poet and should be used to clarify where one thought ends and another begins.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Eumolpus

Mon, 2017-04-17 20:39

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I am been considering changing back. Similarly, sometimes go back to rhyme, or strict form. The last 2 poems I wrote I used total punctuation. I am personally not in favor of some punctuation, that doesn't work for me. All or none.
I must have had been impressed by certain writing without punctuation recently, (Ferlinghetti or Breton) and have been there for a few months. It has a modern "look" I must be attracted to. But going forward, we'll see...
Is a poem ever finished...sometimes i think yes. There are some poems I wrote in my youth that capture something i could never write again quite the same, and I'm not tempted to change them. I think the Brazilians call that "Saudade".

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

wesley snow

Wed, 2017-04-19 18:08

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I agree. Some things can't be changed.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
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Esker

Sun, 2017-04-23 22:26

Esker's picture

rides...cannot help but think of Fear and Loathing...
the cardigans video..'losing my favorite game'
Wendy o Williams driving through the wall of
television sets somewhere in the desert...
sad because both artists ended up taking their
lives later except cardigans...but the car culture
is frenetic energy..
was in this good sized motor home van..
cramped as a B-24 bomber...my chum bright
witty and funny...we saw people and would do
the dialogue...we are not cruel...no yelling
nor mocking or pointing...we saw this one chap
in a good neighborhood prowling along and
had his face..bald head tatooed like to me alley oop
see it is a marvel or stan lee character..
the buskers....and clumps of downtrodden with a
coffee and a smoke...the soma of modernity...
playing the gta 5 game later at home..in the game
same characters are clumped with coffee and cigarettes
we met crazies too who just veered up to us and tried
to start shit....dog barking insanely....trying to put
the dog bed...lawn chairs in van and escape polite
enough...we just set many off....wasnt trying...
my chum was talking about driverless cars everything
he saw something texting or not paying any attention
to the wheel..someone...i thought it was quaint his
new ideas...but when i got home...googling along not
looking for it...there it was....
I like looking at the funny google car images...
like our adventure we saw stuff u just cannot make
up...
had a friend who wrote poetry about the stuff she
saw while commuting to work...shes some management
in top end old blue chip place..
she was here for awhile..

everything is different today...
and yes.....it would be weird for the kids
to think of a car you had to hang onto
like sailing....modern craft...seaboard
to the bahamas and beyond
no one hand sails anymore
autogyro and autopilots

excellent poem

w

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