the Wreck

The wreck

Someone you are is stuck
A stranger whose hair smells familiar, your color
Eyes closed, lashes still
Asleep. Indulge the imagination.

Body inside the Mercedes Benz,
of good class
Its pretty exterior--good health, genes, family, status
has been pressed into one
2:1. A metal diet,
skinny, letting the ugly metal wrinkles show

I stumbled across this scene,
walking lightly, the ghost outside the body does
2:1.
The road's a glass floor,
society's place for voyeurs
Letting them pry publicly into someone's
your
private matter, Tragedy.

I watch a person--myself, you, me, the stranger inside the car
be cut from the rich rich black
The Life clamp used its might to free the
sleeping soul still here. okay.
And spare the crying wife with young Madeleine at her side
pigtails, little girl hands clasped inside big ones; white smock, embroidered name.
This stranger's--you, me, the ghost outside the door's--
supposed to be lovely future.

I watched as men, angels, in brown suits and yellow florescent stripes
work, sweat, and save a stranger's life
Beating the odds against the deserting Sun.
98 degrees. Cruel but hell, that's life.

A success? The dry day was nothing
short of tears. only Fear.
Fear that the time, the hour, the second--this day could have found you stuck
inside your life's very pretty exterior
with only your body to show,
the imagination standing inside the ghost right Your door

A stranger--you, me, ghost outside the door--was forced into a tragedy
in need of the life clamp.