Author: Jared Abraham

On the beauty, horror, and sorrow of a drunken hit-and-run

poetry

The spray of dust was majestic
as the pickup exploded the bricks,
and yet it did not stop
but proceeded to further rut the yard
and straddle another mail box
which was broken into a million teeny, tiny pieces
by the powers of modern machinery
and alcohol.
And yet the truck was not dissuaded
from its onward course, but
denying the logical conclusion of the air-bag,
the truck drove on, with sparks flying as
the undercarriage scratched its path into the ground.

And as I watched,
I could not stop thinking
about the old man
I glimpsed in the driver’s seat
and the semi-circle and
squiggly line on the liscence plate;
about what causes an old man to become
so pissed at 6:00 in the afternoon
and then to drive home,
against all the insistence of MADD.

Was it bad news? bad health? bad gas?
Was it caused by a call? a friend? a thought?
Or was he just lonely: alone: forgotten:
drowning his sorrows: forgetting why he was drinking?
Or maybe he was just an old bastard,
trying to kill someone on his way home.
Whatever the reason, whatever the cause,
tonight the old, handicapped, mail box destroyer
is sitting in prison,
wishing today had gone down differently,
and I too wish it had happened differently
because these feelings of pity are not comfortable.

Sometimes 2

poetry

sometimes

late at night,

i can’t stop thinking, wondering, pondering

about

what the future holds, where I fit

and whether I like that place much.

and all the thinking

gets me nowhere, except

to more tired in the morning.

wishing for utopias from my dystopian world

poetry

24 years after 1984
and i’m still reading dystopias
because they seem the most true

I Want to Believe
That the world will be a better place
That everyone will be equal
That the future is on an upward course.

but no matter how much i want to believe
i can’t get past the lessons
that Mulder taught and the fear
that we are all mind slaves
caught up in our ideology:
capitalism
communism
what’s the difference-ism
if in the end
we are always wrong
in the end.

there may be no Big Brother prying around
but is America all that different?
there may be no Fahrenheit 451
but surely Fahrenheit 911 isn’t much better.
in our quest for a better world
do We inevitably end with a Brave New one?
or is it as Nathaniel said
that man’s accidents are God’s purposes
that no purposeful action will ever do what we intend?
after the Earth’s Holocaust
will everything merely be the same
in the end?

i find enjoyment in

poetry

small things, strange things,
things in which
my wife is always amazed.

like taping stargate
and watching it all day;
or the thought of sci-fi friday
not being too far away.

like new video games
to play on my wii;
and summer vacation
giving me leisure just to be.

like burt’s bees wax
and its surprising tingle;
or the Christmas season
and the coming of kris kringle.

like listening to indie music
and finding new bands;
or watching strange movies
that take place in distant lands.

like sitting at home
alone with my wife,
focusing only on the present
and not the rest of life.