Explication of a Car Ride

Longest poem I've ever written, so it's behind a cut to keep all you'ses friends pages clean from pollution. So personal I almost didn't put it up here.

Subject matter: Romance, cars, airplanes, shopping malls, escape, hopes, radar, time, college, cynicism, moving on, optimism\
Length: 1656 words (5 pages in Microsoft Word size 12)

Please enjoy.








Explication of a Car Ride
(to the Airport to Drop Off a Long Distance Lover After a Weekend Visit)

Summarize this weekend like a poem explication
For you, at least, it was a well-deserved vacation
I’m glad, I’m glad, I really am,
That you could find comfort in your revelation.
You rarely open up, and the admittance you told-
Though it hurt me to hear it-
Had to be stopped before it grew into a mold
Of one sided affection hidden from view.
It could have eaten straight through to the base of us
And caused decay in the vital core.
Rotting from concealed wounds seems a disgusting fate.
Thank you for telling the truth.
As usual, you knew the right thing to do.

I heard you say that you still love me as always now,
But are unsure for how much longer we can remain a pair, or how...
I shudder, tears rolling like tires, all three days you‘re here.
Now it’s time for you to stop being so near.
Indiana University calls you back to school. The class bells will ring tomorrow morning.

My mother drives us to the airport to drop you off. Her lurches and swerves make me nauseous.
Over the weekend, with you here, I had gotten used to your gentle driving style.
Now a few hours later here I am eating fake Chinese, what should be comfort food, in a mall food court
And my stomach’s losing interest all the while
The artificial fakeness overshadowing the junk food fun taste by a mile.
I know what happened to this meat while it was still alive
If only I could be a vegetarian enough to care.
Ah, if the world was full of people with compassion that rare,
I’d be sitting in a forest instead of this manufactured chair
In paved over land that was once wet and wild with nature.

People as
Rare as gold, rare as saffron,
Rare as you are with other people.
You don’t belong in this second-guessing world.
You don’t cheat, lie,
Or disbelieve everything the way others do
I thought I was the same
And I still think it’s true
That the wavelength of me
Matches the wavelength of you
At least in brilliant bleeps of radar interference
Like the screeches the radio picks up instead of NPR
As we drive past the airport’s radar towers in the family car.

Nnnnngeeeeep. Nnnnngeep. And now Garrison Keilor with four...nngeeeeeeeep!

“Huh, that’s odd. That’s never happened before.”

That has to be worth something more.

Now, you say, our future is as unclear as the radio’s static.
I can’t trust in things to come.
So all I can think must stay in the present?
That’s anything but pleasant.
Looking forward to someday being with you was the happiest thought I could conjure.
I’d fall asleep on an infinite pillow of promise
Now I fold my hands under my head in mockery of hope
They’re cold, bony, dry and flaky for lack of moisturizer- why not keep them dry if nobody’s around to hold them?
Why would I even condition my hair
If nobody around me would care
As much as your fingers did
When they were touching Pantene Pro-V velvet?

The clock on the dashboard ticks minutes by...
It teases in a digital LCD voice,
Time...time...time...

If I can’t dream of one day having your soul and body
Lying by my side for a time- not forever, not a decade, just an unspecific amount of time-
Then all else I can dream of seems dull by comparison.
Dull as the gray blight of urban landscape that rolls by our foggy windows.

College is coming. New friends are waiting to be made.
I don’t know them yet. How can I know they even exist?
It’s much easier to think of being with you after getting my degree
Than to think of people who I know only as ghosts
Of friends yet to come
Walking backwards through my hopes.
You’re visible now. They’re just wisps,
Ships of promise held to the shore by hemp ropes.
Ships full of possible geniuses, possible dopes.
Flying ships fly above us. You’re scheduled to enter one soon.

The clock on the dashboard ticks minutes by...
It teases in a digital LCD voice,
Time...time...time...
I flip it the bird from the back
You in the passenger seat, eyes focused on anything but the mirror I stare at you with,
Fail to notice.
My vulgarity’s safely concealed from all but that damn bastard clock.

The mirror reflects you back to me
About a tenth as vividly in the car
As how you were in full view a few hours ago as we kissed in the guest room.
Don’t let me see your face
If I do then I’ll see how beautiful you are
And I’ll let tears bring me down from calm grace
At the thought of you leaving more than just Cleveland

I can’t ruin our short visit by crying, and I can’t let my mom see me weep.
I have to stop being such a negative creep.
If I ignore the truth, then I’m fine
All I have to do is not think
All I have to do is turn off my fool mind
If I can turn off my mind
Then I won’t have to cry
All I need to do is find the power switch
From what I hear it’s rather risky, but...
I had never understood the desire to quiet thoughts with sleep, drugs, orgasms or highs Until today in the mall food court
Staring at the fake-stone column between me and a couple of high school kids
Flirting with each other at the beginning of a short-term fling
My mind flung out into tumultuous fractals of thought
The kernel at the base was what you had told me earlier this weekend.
I close my eyes, smelling gasoline from the highway, and remember last night.

“Someday, dear, we’ll sleep in the same bed night after night. We will be within holding distance every day at some point in the future.”
You say nothing. In the past you would have said, “Yes,” “Someday“, or “Of course”.
“Is that a dangerous thought to rely on?” I ask, scared to hear the response.
“I don’t know.” You reply.
I know you don’t know, but hearing the truth tears closer to the surface again. A cohabitation's goodnight kiss this isn’t.

I know it’s your decision as to how long this continues
But in the back seat I think of one of the many truths you’ve taught me.
I’m too harsh, too aggressive, too disbelieving and pessimistic. A cynic.
I’m never going to be a cynic again,
With you
I never want to be a cynic again,
With anyone.
But if you leave, I fear the pessimistic half of me,
My negative multiple personality,
Will cackle with triumph and shove its shit-smeared boot in the face of my hopeful dreaming half.
She’s still young. She might not be able to handle being crushed by experience and disgraced with the waste of regretted pasts.
Hopeful me sits in the seat next to me like a doppelganger from an Alanis Morisette video, and stares at me, asking for a hug like a clingy child.

I’m independent, I say to myself as I look at my hands clasped in my lap to keep from putting them on your shoulder. I’m strong by myself. At least, I have been in the past and will be in the unforeseeable future.
I didn’t need anyone but art
Until I met you
I don’t need you anymore
That is, unless I want to avoid numbness

You worry about how I will see you afterwards.
An asshole of an ex?
I know you’re not callus.
If you left, it’s true I wouldn’t be able to forget you-
I’d be chasing your shadow by dating wannabes for years-
But is that just because you’re a good chameleon? Talented at pretending to be the man of every girl’s dreams? Did you learn this in acting workshops as a child star?
No matter how manufactured you are,
I know you’re not callus.
At the time I could never forgive you for leaving.
But I would have to eventually.

I remember my bedroom wall. I took our couple portrait down, and it’s staying down. At the time I thought the pair encased in cheap Geauga Lake portrait studio glass would chuckle at it decades later. Intense hopes.

We hurtle down the highway at speeds we can’t comprehend without the aid of a speedometer. We are riding on top of a controlled explosion.
Intense fires burn up fast.
If the beauty of the flame is all the matters, then what’s wrong with this ending now?
From over here, everything.

We arrive. You get out of the car and take your bag from the back seat, politely accepting my goodbye kiss. I get into the passenger seat and sit down next to a mother who I am sick of by now. As you walk inside the airport and out of sight, I think something I thought the last time I saw you walking away.
You never turn around for a final wave like I do.
You never look back.
My eyes melt a hole in the back of your head asking you to turn around so I can see your face one last time.
I know you won’t
And you don’t.

I take a deep breath, pretending the past really is that clean cut from the now and the later. Tears tear from the inside, trying to get out, and I keep them in in front of my mother. The car drives away, and the radar bleeps through the NPR once again.

”..the recent trend of indie rock optimism can be found -NNNGGGGGGGEEEEEP- Of Montreal‘s hope-filled lyrics which are serving as an inspiration to love struck young couples across America...”