Literary Exercise # 20: The Life Without

Hey all, this is a poem that I've been working on for the past couple of weeks. I read it at my school for an open-mic night, and I got a really good reception. Maybe online audiences carry the same receptivity--at least I hope. Enjoy.

Six cigarettes Between Hell and Heaven

Oh Lord, you’ve been a-calling,
I’ve been stalling, sprawled out on this freeway,
Trying to pretend a jack, spare, and elbow grease
Are all I need, to get me up and running.

You’ve been the affront of my cunning,
Cleverly-devised stunts for the allegorically-impaired,
And after staring down this dashboard for months,
I wonder why, though I fill my tank, I never get where
I’m going;

Road maps are out of the question,
In fact they beg it,
And that presupposes, epistemological fuels,
Not even our top oil-drillers can reconcile,
When they are paid, and when they blink to the situation.

And doesn't your plot provide ecosystems?
All this exhaust and rubber burnt,
Guarding against guard rails,
Makes life a tragedy by two counts: by air and by noise pollution.

I admit, that outside of this poem and the poem-maker,
I’m alone, six cigarettes left as ashen consolations
To a life, smouldering towards indecent expulsion,
No longer with five-star infrastructures and whatever message XM radio had for me today.

If that’s what you wanted, couldn’t you have signaled me?
A two-way transmission from a trucker’s radio,
Letting me know that cops lie under every bridge and it’s not always best to press on?

So sure, I'm singing out, for the first time, interrogatives,
But then others have sung their tune too, to the law,
Only to find where grace abounds, sin propounds,
And there's no prerogative to make a statement,
Unless its seductive, of the oral persuasion.

If everything is as ordered as you say,
Why doesn’t the day come and go without Dionysian-drama happening,
Daily, to update the day?

Mr. Flew, of the two alternatives: free or framed--
Story will decide that for us,
We've to select which end to retain,
Your's was a matting into cloth materials,
Method acting at its fiercest and famed,
Mine is a figure draped,
Nape over steering columns,
Expression in pitiful feign,
That hope would come again.

Stanislavsky would be quick to object,
And Auden would point to the Id,
But if theories are found falsifiable,
And answers in their remains,
In the doctrine of self-destruction,
A holding off of judgments,
Lies a liking of final solutions,
And desires for preservation.