Let's Cartoon the Blacktop/Saturday Morning Special
Watch the edges--they're the real things.
See those stacks of cargo containers?
The ones with the scratch-gleam electricity monster
cute, fluffy, and growling for his supper
through the maze of that yard?
Someone dumps old cargo out of mind, not sight.
Power towers stalk our ley lines of modernity
to cast us on Saturdays, once at a time.
This primary brightness dreams cityscape,
quarantined to the six feet between you and the tv.
No trip was ever real. Can you see it on your skin?
Diagram the old-school maps, color in the route
along freckles and wrinkles--there
will never be a Stuckey's or a Holiday Inn
or a swimming pool or a color found only in projection.
Sun depilates the skin to reveal the car window.
Cows in the distance, last dip before the next town,
the great stores arrayed in racks and shelves and ceilings;
you stay hungry as a villain for cartoon food
among treasures stuffed and fluffy...
Like the monster climbing the empty containers,
Like the rounded hole where the film melts into the light.
Let's cartoon the blacktop; no trip is ever real.
No loop is ever done.
Inspired by this week's brilliant Sunday Muse pic (above) and the incoming cool front. :) I've been in a mood to pick through different kinds of projects, to thumb through the coloring books I picked up to do with my mother-in-law and the jewelry odds and ends I'd been playing with for my nephew's graduation several years ago and just, sort of, forget about writing. I'm in the mood to vacation in places where certain people are still society page caricatures and dystopias are an as-yet-unrealized trend. I am generally a happier person than this. That's where I'd like to go.
-- Chrissa
I'm looking for the glitch in the matrix to make good my escape.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was growing up we lived near a Stuckeys! There certainly does seem to be no escape to the madness that has become our reality. I feel that in your lines here Chrissa. Amazing imagery as always!
ReplyDeleteI really love "let's cartoon the blacktop. No trip is ever real." Awesome.
ReplyDeleteFun reading. If one phrase is too preposterous to imagine don't worry, the next will fit in.
ReplyDelete..
A lot of mood in this one. You do an excellent job of capturing rather amorphous thoughts and feelings and nailing them down in your neat and powerful images--you made me think of the many road trips I took with my second husband, full of a manic fun, and the eyes turned away from the monsters and piles of boxes because of their heavy shadows on reality. I loved this phrase:" Sun depilates the skin to reveal the car window." Also the six feet between the viewer and the tv--that one hit home. This is a hard time to feel light-hearted; I don't feel there's any blame attached to not being able to conjure up that state. It's enough to just keep your hand on the rudder of sanity and steer as best you can. Poetry helps.
ReplyDelete"No trip is ever real". Guess that leaves life to the dreamers
ReplyDeleteHappy Sunday Chrissa
Much💛love
"Watch the edges--they're the real things" is the skin peeling away to open the window. The ley lines of modernity bring us to Stuckey's or a HoJo, indeed. Most excellent write.
ReplyDeleteCeertainly pinpoints the ugliness of modernity (is that a word?). Happily there are still back roads and byways that restore our balance wheels and recall simpler times!
ReplyDeleteTwo words. Superbly Surreal.
ReplyDeleteThe titled reminded me of waking up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons with my brother. It seems surreal and escape into
ReplyDeletesomething fun and imaginative.
I am pondering what is real and what is an illusion these days. Some it not so fun.
Reality is highly overrated... and subjective. Edgy write; not that there's anything wrong with that!
ReplyDeleteLove your title. We try and escape, but the world arrives even when we aren't wanting it to. Love this poem.
ReplyDeleteI’m thinking of cartoons where you could paint endings and beginnings everywhere. Love this, Chrissa!
ReplyDeleteThe many images holds to finish up with a profound insight into the madness.
ReplyDelete