***
1a
stopped at a light, on my way to
somewhere I wish I already was,
the curve of the windshield seems today flat,
like a muted television in a department store
tuned to some episode of
reality TV, while I am
shopping for something else-
nearby a woman sits cross-legged on
naked concrete median, packing
spare clothes in freezer bags-
she mumbles to herself,
taking inventory of her
ragged rugged pack, which
contains all that she owns-
in two dimensions
she laughs to herself at some joke that
none of us can hear-
2
at dinner my friend explains his
brother’s experience as a
cast member of this or that
reality program.
“Everything he said,”
he tells me, “was entirely
scripted. He is actually
nothing like that.”
We laugh and take small bites of
twenty dollar entrees.
1b
the light turns green and
we all drive on. The flatscreen shows now
pristine white shopping centers, as if I
changed the channel to
programming I could understand and
think about later while falling asleep
in a warm bed-
***
inputoutputmodule 
LOVE,LOVE,LOVE,LOVE this.
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Thanks. I am worried that it is a bit sentimental, but thanks for the compliment!
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It’s a little strange to me to think how on the same wavelength we can be, perhaps even on the same days, though we are not in the same town or talking every day.
It struck me very forcefully just the other day how much owning a car shelters you from the realities of life around you. It literally seals you off from encountering those around you, especially the poor and lower classes.
So much could be said on this topic.
If you own a car, especially if, like me, you travel in it constantly because you live in a suburb but work in the city, then you spend a lot of your time in a self-created, self focussed environment.
The beggars you see on the street corners are like the exception which proves the rule: because you have a choice whether to look in their direction, and you have a physical barrier between you, and you will move on in a few seconds, you feel as if you see the poor and interact with them at the same time as you are able to ignore them so much more easily.
What to DO about it though?
I was thinking these thoughts, and then I watched the movie version of Wise Blood last night, which resonates with this theme as well. Isn’t it funny how that quote from Wise Blood appears so apt here as well:
“No man with a good car needs to be justified!”
And then I finally come back to read your poem which echoes this as well.
Amazing.
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As i am fond of saying, i do love such confluences when they occur. i labored somewhat intensely over this poem, and i am still worried that it verges a bit on the didactic, if not the overtly sentimental. However, i tried my best to capture the sensation of the surreal that i experienced the other day. As for “what to DO about it,” that’s a tremendous and difficult question which potentially has dozens of appropriate answers, but i guess the answer in general would be “not nothing.”
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