Friday, November 20, 2009

Friday poetry challenge: put it in park

So I'm sitting in my Volvo in a busy grocery-store parking lot on a damp, cold, gray afternoon, and my car won't start. I turn the key: nothing. Not so much as a click. Oops, looks like I left the lights on...and the radio...and the seat-warmers. Okay, I've grown accustomed to being pretty stupid in the afternoon, but this is ridiculous. Now I'm sitting in the dark in a car with no lights or heat or power and I don't even have the energy to call AAA. Tell you what: I'll just sit back and let the car make the call.

Yes: for a few hours yesterday afternoon, both my car and I were suffering from dead batteries. But this is not the first time I have resembled my car; in fact, people are always commenting about how well my car suits me. "It looks like an English professor's car," they say. It's not at all flashy, just stodgy and dependable, kind of battered and showing some signs of age, but it just keeps running (except when some idiot overtaxes the system and pulls the plug). More than any other car I've ever owned, this car seems like an extension of myself:

My car 'n' me
we both agree
it's time to take a nap;
we're sitting still
without the will
to make those spark-plugs zap.

My jumper cables
are not able
to set the gears in motion,
so we'll just park
without a spark,
avoiding all commotion.

Thanks to the efforts of a spouse who knows how to replace a battery, my car and I are both functioning properly today--a little slow, a little sluggish, but still puttering along.

And poetrying along too. Your challenge today is to write verse of any sort about a time when you've been stuck in park--with or without a car.

4 comments:

  1. There was a time
    I sat for a dime
    Right in my small cubicle chair

    There was no work
    Nor fun place to lurk
    So I sat without flourish or flair

    Boring it was
    Not snoring I was
    As I sat pulling my hair

    Patiently waiting
    A project of weighting
    Something on which I could bear

    My mind

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  2. Actually, remove "Right" from the third line. It helps the rhythm problem caused by "cubicle" unless you pronounce it cub'cle; but it's still awkward, so just take it out as you read :o)

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  3. My dress was white
    His suit rented
    The sun peeked out
    A beam of light
    Just as our vows were said

    The park birds sang
    We nodded, smiled
    Friends cheered
    As we turned away
    Joined now for years

    The car we'd parked
    Had slipped and sagged
    Into the curb;
    The flattened tire
    Bursting our new joy

    Rented jacket aside
    White dress protected:
    "I'm not touching that"
    Standing for fear
    Of stains of grass

    Jack up, then down
    Tires switching places
    Wedding party to rejoin/
    Party to begin/
    Now on to the drinks!

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  4. These are just fun. Anyone who can make poetry out of being stuck in cubicle-land or changing a tire on her wedding day ought to get some kind of prize.

    ReplyDelete