Dirge  

There is a
speed at which this
Caravan and
all its contents rattle uncontrollably.
Right now,
hollering down the highway, I
feel as though at
any second

it’s all bound to come gracefully undone:

           side panels butterfly-winging open in
           turbulent flow, briefly catching the
           wind as sails might
           before tearing away and drifting
           off silently into ditches and their
           distant thuds.

At a moment like this you can’t
help but run through a catalogue of
music appropriate for disassembly,
tinkering with the soundtrack of your life.
All I want right now are
balls-out guitars,
heavy distortion,
wailing in a dirge.

Just play something.

           Cracks in the windshield
           intersecting,
           bisecting,
           evolving into silvery
           spiderless webs glinting and
           sparkling in the cold
           winter sunshine.

The Caravan is gutless and
it makes me feel bad to say it.
I mean it’s not gutless in
the sense that it’s cowardly, just
that it’s engine isn’t powerful.
It’s got guts, lots of them,
if it’s the bravery variety we’re talking about here.
Right now it’s running on guts, those
bravery guts, the guts that would allow an
old shitbucket tan Caravan with the
tacky faux-wood panels
to turn over in the hoarfrost,
nipple-imploding cold of winter, knowing
I’m going to gun it hard and
drive its last kilometers into snow
as an act of making these last kilometers
the last kilometers. All this
so the damn thing can stare into sheer
oblivion
and think:

‘Fuck it. I had a good run and
I’m going out screaming.
So fuck you, metal mortality,
Mr. Grim Automotive Reaper,
I’m going to hell and
I’m going to shove a ski rack
up your cruel chrome ass!’

           Steam erupting from the radiator.
           A geyser of water and antifreeze
           coming up Old Faithful as the
           hood is flung away
           in cartwheels in my wake.

Most Caravans don’t
get to die this way.
Most age badly, ride the
arc of age as though
it were meant to be a speed bump
instead of a mountain.
Most fool themselves into
a false sense of relevance,
becoming shelter for the homeless,
makeshift shithouses,
nesting sites for scavenging birds.

           The needle of the speedometer
           falling off as the
           odometer pushes and pushes in its
           count of kilometers and kilometers,
           doing the accounting
           on every memory I have of
           my ass planted behind this wheel.

Not this Caravan.
I’m giving it a heaping
helping of dignity.

           Perforated headlights
           howling on its way to

           cold fucking Hell.

I don’t even mind
having to walk home.

© 2006 Michael Appleby