I’m Just Along for the Ride

I had a conversation with my creative mind at too early o’clock one morning. It started when it tried to push this idea on me while I was sleeping. Wake up, it says, I have this great idea. Go back to sleep, I respond. This guy is persistent, though. He keeps pestering me until I finally crack my lids open and blearily make a hand-scramble for a light switch. It’s on. Okay, I tell this creative prick with no sense of time, what is it? I have an idea for a poem, he tells me. So I gathered.

So we get to writing it down like a regular think-tank, kind of like a brain normally does for me, and I finally look at what we slapped on this wretched slip of scrap paper and ask my brain what it is. It’s a new poem, he says. No, I tell my brain, this is hardly a poem–the meter is some bastard child of sprung verse with irregular line lengths and everything I hate about modern poetry. Trust me, he responds, it’ll work. Well I go off on my brain and tell him I’m not keeping this and if he wants me to seriously write anything he should come to me with some serious ideas.

Well, next thing I know my mind goes on strike and brings in my stomach and the rest of the GI tract so that I’m puking everything up and need to be rushed to the emergency room for emergency IV fluids because my stomach decided to step on out and refused to take in water. I’ve since convinced him to continue working, but my mind must still be on the run because now all I’m left with is a crazy-sounding verse I must have written in a sleep-deprived dehydrated state and a slight headache.

I’m still not showing anyone the other poem. But here is the crazy-sounding verse I wrote. The format made sense at some point in time, and quite frankly, I’m not thrilled about it, but it’s been stuck in my head all day. No idea why.

For the Ride

We’re truck driving to a dumpster dive,
Would you like a ride?
We’ll take the oil-streaked street
To the pot of gold:
It’s a rainbow if you only
Close your eyes,
It will reach the sky
When the hills unfold,
And our garbage-guide glides us
To the treasure of the rust
At the shore beyond the sea,
Where the wine is lined with trust,
And all who died have sighed “we’re free!”

We’re truck driving to a dumpster dive,
Would you like to ride–

With me?

 

~Michael Danger Caskey