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I am vaguely aware of being unconscious. I’m driving fast over the Ben Franklin. Someone removed the stoplights and I am alone on the roads tonight. Night time is thick now but everything is lit from the moon. I’m not in my truck at all. I’m in some fast car that really tears it up. I’m sliding around the curves by the Art Museum.
The bricks of that building pulse from black light that is pulsing down from the stars. The pulsing light lights up my car too. The cops are out but they don’t seem to recognize my car and don’t know what to do, so they can’t catch me. They try for a few blocks but they can’t keep up. Everything is hot too, like the daytime here. I’m glad this isn’t Collingswood because Collingswood seems even hotter. I don’t know exactly where I am but I know that I should know the route. Even though I can’t think where it will take me
Then I get onto 76 which is a highway and floor it up over two hundred. Each time I hit a patch of dirt or daisies, the car slides a little to the outside. I am always turning, turning, turning, holding on, breaking, accelerating into the apex. Even in the long straight parts I’m recovering from the last turn and peeling into the next one.
Boathouse row is a bright blur that spills down the Schukill river. There’s no sound of course and I’m not myself anymore which makes me think I can go faster. I start looking for a spot. I’ll know it when I see it. I take the zoo exit. It’s around the corner and I’m almost there now. I can smell something burning which is exactly what I’m looking for but I can’t see it yet. Then the engine stops and I pull over; one tire on the curb even though there’s no one parked close or on that tight blind road. I’ve lost the power steering.
When it’s still I can see smoke pumping out of the hood like a bomb touched off. I pop the hood and the metal is red hot when I pick it up but it doesn’t burn my fingers. My fingers make dents and the smoke clears like I’ve hurt it. The engine is knotted up and broken down the middle where the last of the smoke is. The smoke is what I smelled and the broken engine is what I was after but I am disappointed, waiting here on Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard.
I look at the balloon that hangs over the world's smallest zoo. I know I have figured something out, but it slides like smoke and I’m already tired again.
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It's a tough old world. Better critique me before I make my way down that list to you.
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