Friday, May 6, 2011

Combatwords May 6, 2011: Freeway

Combatwords May 6, 2011: Freeway

Ribbons of meet on the static-yet-mobile palace of traction. Your religion is auto, or stick-shift; it's speed and it's trap and it's an exploration of the already explored.

Combat Expiration: 12am PST, 5/9/2011

Critique Expiration: 12am PST, 5/11/2011, with a rolling grace period of 24 hours to allow for critique rebuttals.

Bonuses/Penalties: +2 if posted by 6pm PST, 5/6/2011, +1 if posted by 2am PST 5/7/2011, -1 if posted by 6am PST 5/9/2011, -2 if posted by 12pm PST 5/9/2011.

The Rules: http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2010/07/official-rules-for-combatwords-updated.html



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4 comments:

  1. The Sign

    I drove to Eagle Rock late one night
    And bought a Leslie speaker at a music store

    Loaded it into my dad's station wagon
    Got on the freeway to head home

    A few miles down the road I pulled over
    To stare up at the huge empty sign

    The white letters hadn't been painted on yet
    It was just a big blank green freeway sign

    "This must be the road to nowhere," I said
    A cool night breeze blew leaves and tumbleweeds

    I remember it whenever I hear
    The sound of a Hammond through a Leslie
    And whenever I hear about something in Eagle Rock
    And sometimes when I'm just driving
    And looking up at the signs
    That usually tell you where you're going
    Usually ... but not always

    ReplyDelete
  2. If I could strip self-loathing
    the way I shed clothing,
    bear pointless failures of life
    as mothers bare saggy tits with pride
    I might get to wear a smile
    every once in a while.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I-95 to Avalon, FL


    The armadillos tried their best to stop you
    but you sent them bouncing like bocce balls into the kudzu.
    The scrub pines lopped off their own limbs
    and hurled them into your path, but your snow tires
    snapped through them like wooden matchsticks.
    The garrison of crows stationed on the twin yellow lines
    turns out to be cowardly, evaporating at the roar of your engine.
    A short order ex-con in a truck stop
    tried to poison you with an okra omelet
    but you just vomited a while in the parking lot
    and continued on your quest. Due south.
    The fangs of orange cones were hardly menacing,
    nor the miles squeezed to a single lane for resurfacing.
    Countless multitudes of insects martyred themselves
    against your windshield, perhaps in the hope
    that their accumulated goop would glaze the glass into opacity.
    They didn't count on the Stuckey's, with its bucket
    of gray crudwater, in which was sheathed
    the rubber blade Excalibur, that mighty squeegee.
    No, nothing could keep you from completing your quest,
    from rescuing your damsel in distress
    (whose ample gums and girth were not apparent
    in the pictures that she'd posted on the internet)
    from the room where she was being held against her will
    in a trailer park in a suburb of Gainesville.
    Knight errant, you kept spurring on your metal steed.
    You gritted your teeth
    on account of all the caffeine pills you'd popped.
    Nothing -not shed dragonscales
    nor flipped hubcaps, nor state cops
    could ever cause you to ease up.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Vikings Sailing I-280

    I saw an apocalypse cloud—it was sorrow;
    A longboat of blackness above the Pacific.
    I rowed my own passage aboard a Mercedes;
    My boss was the skipper, I worked in the galley.
    The sunrise reflected upon the cool ocean
    Of morning, we drove to hotels where the coffee
    Is swill, where the pastries are waxen, the people
    Are plaster and brittle and worship the dollar.
    I worship the dollar, the suits by Armani;
    The flow of a people in search of a nexus
    Of love, of a meaning beyond the cold freeway
    Bisecting the conference, slicing the parking,

    Lots and the longboats at war with the earth:

    Burning, but not yet consumed and digging,

    Yet not quite interred and damning, but not yet doomed.

    ReplyDelete