Burnt-out Cars

[hillwalker]

BURNT-OUT CARS


Inside his head are dead-end circuits;
synaptic thread-ways strung tight as copper wiring,
constricted,
short-fused,
while life and all its hurry flies past
in a dazzle of street lights and silhouette nightmare scenarios.

Midweek.
Endless rain making days gel.
Cars coaster riding the rat’s race down to the harbour;
Zombie convoys primed with Preludes,
prowling at the outside corner till Stella shows up at the wheel.

She propels a snarly laugh in his direction
as she tells what she and Katy did to that Rube the other night.

Rain splats the windshield;
its random shadows pock-marking the perfect skin of her face,
the coating of black labsalve making mockery of her beauty.
Lonnie screwing down a laugh,
then revving up fit to smooth the cogs.

Inside their chemical imaginations
they are already pushing the speed limit on this one.
Blow-box blurbing out a warning,
“Jack-knife at 2bridges Harbour approach.”
He feeds in the bypass code.

Zooming in on the junction of 7th and West Felton.
Crosshairs on a midnight blue, Korean-built LV.
Driver chewing a buck’s wizz and finger-tapping the wheel.
Red baseball cap and shades like an ancient Tarantino hallucination.
Lonnie spoons up another laugh
as Stella lures this latest Rube loose of his safety cage.

This is the cortisol high that he craves,
the neurotic numbness that alone blurs away pain,
though sometimes he can barely remember how pain really felt any more;
the who did what to who
and what his ma had to say about the situation.

Spading it down in this top-notch pickup
they sit tight and watch the buildup to belsen.
Interchan static like threadbare video,
warbling and crackling as it pollocks the screen.
He shrugs off a laugh and picks up a tremcode
about faulty sensors at the Ventura Interchange.

Time to cut free;
blow this cheapo carcass to hell and back.
They eject and squat at the roadside
watching the first blue flicker
take a bite
before spitting out a wad of hot red fire
that fills the cockpit with snarling black smoke.
You can hear the plastic popping from here.

And then retreating on coasters back to Stella’s
where they couple,
where she soothes him with her kisses and that hot bitter scent of hers;
fuel to his fire
like weed and flowers and all sorts of chewed warmness.
She calms down,
he calms down some more
as the embers of their fusion grow cool,
then finally burn themselves out.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I feel as if I've just had my head banged by a combination of a Heavy Metal celeb coupled with a hot-wired poet! This is extraordinary, I think on first reading, but it's going to take several more before I've come to a better understanding of it.

I loved your references to cultural icons such as Tarantino, Pollock and, possibly Frank Stella. Doubtless I've missed several others.

[_Shannon_]

I really like the bit about the rain on her face...really, really.

I also really like this "where she soothes him with her kisses and that hot bitter scent of hers;
fuel to his fire
like weed and flowers and all sorts of chewed warmness."

I don't understand the poem, in the sense of understanding what it's about--but I like the sound of the words together and how they flow.

The one thing I didn't like--though it is most likely because I am missing the import of it--was the repeating of the word "coaster"....at the end there when I was all chillin' with the vibe of the words I had to go back into alert mode to think of where I'd read that before in the poem.

[MorpheusSandman]

Damn, this is a powerful piece. It maintains a kind of aesthetic narrative coherency while at the same time feeding into some kind of hallucinogenic, fuel-injected, drunken high. I'm certain I didn't get all of it, but much of it leaves really vivid impressions in my mind. It really has this wonderful rhythm that starts rather slow, but slowly builds over the piece until those penultimate stanzas that reach rather dizzying heights of expressions and images, before it finally cools down again at the end. One really does get the sensation of a fire igniting, exploding, and embers finally cooling and fading. Superb work.

[lallison]

The first time I read this I appreciated its rich language, the dark emotion it exudes, and its criminal narrative element. The second reading I was better able to pick up on some of the puns and metaphors you have going here, but the narrative was never clear enough to pick up on exactly what was going on other than some drug use, blowing up cars, and a bit of character development. The connection between the cars and the characters is nicely developed too. The confused imagery works in some ways, with the confused, high minds of the characters. I also felt unsatisfied, as if this could be better cut and refined to get more control of the piece. Not that out of control dissatisfaction is not part of the lives of drug addicts, but the poet should be in control creating those elements, and I didn't feel that with this one. I think some revision work could strengthen this interesting poem into an awesome one.

[dizzydoll]

Excellent work again,
I sense the hours of time put in.


Midweek.
Endless rain making days gel.

I enjoyed it all but this stood out as very expressive. Good job. :biggrin5:

[Hawkman]

Well, you pulled out all the stops on this one, hill. Truly bardic! It is a fascinating and compelling read. I picked up on the drug fuellel, dissafected, joyriding-youth theme well enough. Strangely the poem has a very American feel for me, kind of an unholy fusion of Hip-Hop and Goth. :)

I felt this verse,

"Spading it down in this top-notch pickup
they sit tight and watch the buildup to belsen.
Interchan static like threadbare video,
warbling and crackling as it pollocks the screen.
He shrugs off a laugh and picks up a tremcode
about faulty sensors at the Ventura Interchange."

a little dense with metaphor but generally I think it's marvellous. Not at all what I would have expected. Reminds me a bit of Devonport in the 1980s where if you got lost you could navigate by the pillars of dense oily smoke by day and the glow of burning cars by night!

Cheers, H

[lallison]

Your showing your age Hawk.

[hillwalker]

Thank you all for your comments -

@Prince - I quite like the term 'a hot-wired poet' - I shall try to live up to the title (I wish!).
There was an attempt to insert contemporary references that might have gained more current (and less specific) usage in some not-so-distant future. Hence Pollock (but he is the only artist alas). Stella was just some girl's name that came to me from the ether.

@Shannon - I'm glad you enjoyed reading it and appreciated the descriptive parts.
Understanding the poem is not important in this particular case - I was more anxious that the words sound effective and create a certain atmosphere than tell a coherent story. And 'coaster' was used twice purely to suggest the free-wheeling journey to and from the 'scene of their crime'.

@Morpheus - you got pretty much everything out of this piece I had intended.
I have to admit it is an experiment - my allergic reaction to those writers (not necessarily only on LitNet) who feel obliged to use flowery, purple passages and archaic language purely because they believe that is how 'proper poetry' should sound.
This is very much 'improper' poetry - not everybody's cup of tea but I'm glad you found it to your liking.

@lallison - you have identified the lack of control and see it as an underlying flaw, perhaps because the narrative is broken up and dictated by the actions and mindsets of the two characters.
I was aiming for something similar to 'Clockwork Orange' in mood, and to a lesser extent in language. Burgess pictured a society where Russian words had entered the vocabulary of the thugs who feature in the novel. I suppose I was picturing a more Americanised future with a number of new words of my own thrown in.
There was definitely control in the way I structured the narrative - but perhaps it does lack a certain tightness that would add to the tension, but it was very much my intention to let Lonnie and Stella set their own pace.
Regardless of that, thanks for your intelligent input as ever.

@dizzy - Thanks - less 'hours' than you might think, actually.
And what a weird coincidence! Last night I congratulated DarkMuse on her 666th blog - and here you are with your 666th post. There's definitely devilish work afoot. :reddevil::reddevil:

@Hawkman - you identified my attempts to write in the American vernacular (and with the same crisp shorthand one associates with many contemporary American writers).
An 'unholy fusion of Hip-Hop and Goth' - yep, that's me to a T.
I can also remember the plague of joy-riders (in most UK towns in the late 80's/early 90's). This is the next stage - hi-jacking then boy-racing then burning for the sheer hell of it.
Cheers for your kind words.

H

[dizzydoll]

The devil made me do it.

[Bar22do]

I'm lost in references but surrendered to your poem's devilish "unbearableness"... surrendered or smashed? Whichever, both, and it will take me several other readings plus several drinks (!) to face it. To face its blinding energy and -- yes: beauty. But how about YOU? For as I read your poem for the second time, it felt as if you too gave up to whatever the poem wanted from you. It's overpowering. And I hope you're still alive! Thanks for this fascinating reading! Bar

[hillwalker]

Thank you, Bar! Yes, I escaped unscathed to write another day.
H

[neilgee]

You're inspired, H.

Reading that poem was like speeding at one hundred down the outside lane of the motorway in the driving rain, excellent choice of title, and the atmosphere that the title evokes, then the first verse with all its electrical imagery, very clever, now all we need is my friend blank verse to tell us what it was actually about!

[hillwalker]

Thanks neil, glad you enjoyed the ride.

[Lumiere]

"chewed warmness" !!!!
I love this bit, (especially because in my brain, I hear Dylan Thomas reciting it).
But I'm a little put-out: there goes another brilliant phrase laid claim to.

This is quite good. Like Bar22do, I didn't catch all the references, but I enjoyed it thoroughly, none-the-less. Very colorful and electric. :coolgleamA:

[hillwalker]

Thanks lumiere - although I doubt the great man himself would be seen dead reading such stuff. Having said that, he could probably make a shopping list sound evocative.