Landscapes of the Mind - Poems

Car Crash

I.

Dreaming in the dark hours

to the terror of mirrors.

Glittering substance

litters the asphalt, stuff

of crushed ice dispensers. 

Red-black pool of oil spills

from the mangled metal,

resembling a surreal-

ist sculpture. Limp hands

dangle, bloodless and pale.

That's how I pictured it.

II.

How awesome, how awful,

that in one split second, something 

whole can be irreversibly shattered.

One moment, a couple pulls out of a

Taco Bell; then, a screech of brakes

and wheels, a molten shower

of sparks that skitter 

like beads of a necklace ---

a child, orphaned.

Each splinter would then be

considered its own whole, no more

comprising the entire (bent, steel)

framework, but part of something

larger, still. A bird on a mural.

A hymn to a symphony,

building up to a crescendo

more fearful than life itself.