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Thunder Sandwich #23 |
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John Grey |
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DRIVING EAST I'm driving away from you and toward the sun and its glare is steaming off the wind-shield. The glass is glittery and I head for what I cannot see. Inside the cabin, the gears glide smooth. But outside, the sides are straight and tunneled with trees, the rear-view mirror's a galleria of cars I can't afford and ahead of me, all the enemies of vision are acetylene bright and shining their flash-lights in my eyes. Driving toward the sun... may as well leave the road, the earth, may as well plunge into its flame for all the good my eye-sight's doing me. Still there's an amazement that I can be blind at these speeds, that if you were beside me now, I'd be golden. A FAMILY SECRET In every family, there's one they don't talk about. It becomes a mystery and it mutates. Those that know nothing try to shape it into a person but it becomes all passion or all rage, stuff that won't fit easy in a mind and body. They dream of rifling the heads that hold the secret, of just for once being the ones who deliver foods and newspapers to his door, who tap softly, are ushered in. Through their young years, they long to live inside the person they find there. Later on, they only wish to share in the despising of him. Finally, they're indoctrinated into the hermetic circle of the tight lip, the unemotional eyes, but find there's nothing there but a gutted face, a sorry handshake, and bone poking through the sag of flesh. From then to the end of their days, they feel this great nostalgia for their own wild ignorance. |