Tag Archives: poetry

Ode to a Volvo: 4

International car of mystery

You were an enigma,
Full of surprises,
Like when I replaced the fuel pump and then a month later it failed again but NO
It was the second fuel pump… you had two!
Said the mechanic,
“Who knew?”

You gave me signs.
Two months before you passed on
you sang eeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Just eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
The mechanic was flummoxed.
“It’s an alarm,
An indicator for something, but what?”
Not undone seatbelt, not key in the ignition
Nor the Zen koan “the door is a jar”.
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I knew
I knew it was the “buy a new car” indicator.

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Ode to a Volvo: 3

 

O Wise One!
Zen Master!

Teaching me patience and humility,
The slow lane to Enlightenment.
You were no voluptuous Buddha,
but sharp, stolid, angular, a slab of steel,
Impassive as I cursed.

Your lessons were many:

Doors won’t lock… Trust Strangers

Back windshield wipers inoperative… Don’t Look Back

No radio reception… Stay in the Here

Odometer stopped… Stay in the Now

Parts Falling Off… Simplify Your Life

Unexplained Noises… Accept What You Cannot Change

Door handle broken… Try Another Door

Passenger door handle broken… Don’t Pick up Hitchhikers

My worldview shaped to your windshield
And the rearview mirror that sank… slowly… down.
To see behind me I had to duck my head
Bowing bowing
bowing all the time like that has got to make you humble.

O Wise One!
Zen Master!

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Ode to a Volvo: 2

Voluminous Volvo!
Accommodating to a fault,
You swallowed up everything –
Couches, tables, Ikea flatpacks,
Hockey bags, camping gear,
Chairs, coolers, firewood,
Garbage and recycling,
Bikes, children, groceries.

Accepting all without question

Almighty Deliverer!

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Ode to a Volvo: 1

O handsome automobile!
Cross-country chariot
Sweat-box

Your AC was an unfounded rumour,
A mirage.
During the heatwave you blew hot air in my face and I had to spend seven hundred dollars to make you stop.

Cross-country trip with the windows rolled down,
So loud we couldn’t hear each other
Your loose bones rattling beneath us.

And yet we loved you.

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Weekly Eldritch: Conqueror Worm

Prepare for your weekly creeply: a little Edgar Allan Poe for the Hallowe’en season…

Ivor Abrahams, The Conqueror Worm. Print on paper from the E.A. Poe series, 1976.

Ivor Abrahams, The Conqueror Worm. Print on paper from the E.A. Poe series, 1976.

The Conqueror Worm

By Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! ’t is a gala night
   Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
   In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
   A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
   The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
   Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
   Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
   That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
   Invisible Wo!

That motley drama—oh, be sure
   It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
   By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
   To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
   And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,
   A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
   The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
  The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
   In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
   And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
   Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
   Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
   And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

 

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