memento mori

So I had just done the post-mortem final examination of the auto body…conducted the silent (and private!) last rites over our old four-wheeled friend and proceeded to pick over the glove compartment, the trunk, the front and back seats, of everything “important.” I threw it all into a Hefty bag, grabbed the big, 4-armed tire iron and walked out of our mechanic’s auto graveyard into the high noon heat and concrete of Sepulveda Blvd. There. I had joined the walking few. The Untouchables. A caste system refugee on some slow Pilgrim’s Progress back home, dusted by all the cars hurtling by me, spitting up road grime, spewing Styrofoam cups, cigarette butts and assorted trash in their hurry-by wake. A few wide eyes stared at me as they turned the corner past me. I realized the sight of me must have frightened them, with my big X of a trunk tool held aloft, pushing the WALK button. Me in white – a neon reminder that they too, one day, would be dead, I mean, they too would be (gasp!) without a car. Yes, no matter how briefly, the thing they were driving – right now, right by me – would die. So I came home and scratched this poem out (literally, a few times) and realized that old-fashioned feeling I was carrying was guilt. And now the unperfect poem was my punishment. Oh well.
Mea Culpa Mitsubishi…

NDA


walking down the boulevard
with a tire iron in my hand
the sign of the crossed
the unlucky
breakdown
of a pent-up penitente
paying for the sin
of being carless in L.A.