The Accident

You fall

As a stone in its glide to the sea,

Or the tensionless curve

Of a back-buckled skid

On the car’s bonnet.

 

Your image slides though the metal,

Compulsively arched, bowed

By the engine’s brute force,

Snapped

In a slow split second.

 

And under the bumper,

Your head among wheels,

A scream spins off, slicing

The morning’s sunlit calm,

Sheering the air to an edge.

 

And mild confusion ripples away,

And pedestrians grudgingly move towards phones,

Dragging their feet in the sea

Of your altered time, as

Bubbling voices drown

Between waves of the drifting dark.

 

So all times must end;

In darkness and chaos they take you away.

Do you dream,

Discreated by pain,

Of the piston of light and the brooding machine.