His urine, like an amber ale,
streamed toward the shower drain: “Oh, god,” he said,
“The night is dead;
long live the day again.”
Dark coffee beans, from far-off-coasts,
he drilled to a powder fine,
then drank the black tea
pressed from them:
“What a bless-ed life
is mine.”
One tap awoke his glowing screen;
across his palm he swiped:
“Where shall I go?
What need I know?
Ha! Friend—
your post
I like.”
Into a half-gas motorcar
he plugged a pod, so then,
through rim and bumper
tweeted and thumped her
voice:
“John,
make me grin.”
And singing with her,
on slight delay, “Hey-Yah!”
like a child too cute to blame—
he slid off his molasses
glasses and
merged
in
the
freeway
lane.
What I found particularly striking about this poem were the poem’s title and the collage. The collage appears to me like an abstract representation of a car crash, which seems to be foreshadowed in the last two stanzas of the poem. The man’s glasses fall off, and as he merges onto the highway, some kind of crash occurs. The poem’s title, “Why would he see it coming,” indicates that the man in the poem obviously did not anticipate the accident. The man appears to be content with his life, despite nothing particularly interesting going on (making coffee, scrolling on his phone, starting up his car). It is reminiscent of how people often subconsciously have this idea that they are immortal. They’ll hear about tragedies on the news and experience sympathy but still seem to have this notion that nothing like that could ever happen to them. The mundane habits of everyday life are almost distractions to the scary things that happen daily. We become wrapped up in these habits and the temporary joy that they kindle capture our focus, taking it away from natural forces such as death.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed the interesting form in which the poem is written. It looks like the words are drifting away and being called back, much like the man’s focus. The man’s attention and focus seem to dwindle with every new activity, drifting until something else captures his focus again. Then he becomes too distracted and forgets that he is driving a car.