Catalyst of the fuel-injected pinhead (on a hot summer day)
Catalyst of the fuel-injected pinhead (on a hot summer day)
by jim benz
Wind repels
the dull knife
of my body
like gravity
gives weight
to exhaustion,
and this broken
road, half drunk
on time-wasted
asphalt, is faithless
and wicked.
Minneapolis
on a bike
at East Hennepin
and Fifth
is nothing
but a salt-stained
pothole, emphasized
by the shattered
bottle (pointedly)
as I swerve
wide of its
puncturing gist,
and a car,
honking
in disagreement
with fate, flies
past my elbow
giving flight
to the bird
of a disparaging
pinhead
whose only fault
is existence.
Love it. I need to overcome my hatred of Minnesota right now (Tigers fan). I love the desperate, depressing ghetto feel of this. I presume East Hennepin and Fifth is a “bad” part of town?
I didn’t even know this poem had slipped in here. But thanks Shawn. I was thinking that Detroit fans really must HATE the Twins. 2006 worked out okay for the Tigers, but this year? Screwed. Hell of a game though. East Hennepin and Fifth is a strange bit of town, kind of an industrial area that cuts between two residential sections. I poetically altered the location from reality though. Five blocks east is where I was encountering the really nasty pot holes. But that was East Hennepin and Johnson. The stresses and syllables just weren’t ringing very well with that phrase. Frankly, Hennepin has pretty good pavement – cars had to be re-routed along that street after the 35W bridge collapsed (about 6 blocks away) – but the traffic on Hennepin can be deadly.