Zoltan The Star Car, 2003-2010

It is finished. Here he is at the gallows:

He belongs to KUT now.

Zoltan
By John Noel Hooker

I fasten up the strap across my lap, for if, while leering
From out my eyeball flaps, at girls, or maps, and not ahead
The weighty boom of objects and the throb of doom ennearing
Overtakes my deftest steering, still the belt will hold, unveering.
Zig-zags on the loom, I thank, and whom did pull the thread.

But rolling to a standstill at the hand upraised before me,
Of a white-gloved man who seems entranced with traffic crossing mine,
My pebbly knuckles whiten and a fighting lust detours me
A biting need implores me, like a maiden (“Me so horny!”)
But I impotently hold the pedal, peddling my time.

For duration nigh eternal how I yearn to be released!
How the ulcer acid churns and blithely burns away my guts!
How sour is the pus that roils thus through every crease!
For my car will never cease to bestow unhappy peace
When what is needed direly is fire for the thrust!

My carriage, with a lurch, moves from its perch (as if a chasm).
The sit-stand-sit of church, which I besmirched, in juvenescence,
Now seems a swollen breeze compared to these frail gasps and spasms.
Drivers back there try to fathom, “What’s the handicap that has him?”
Hazard lights ablaze, and eyes aglaze, I hazard guesses:

Are your plugs a-sparking as you park yourself at will?
Is your oil darkened by a sharp and spiny grit?
Is your line of fuel filled with stool, or some swill?
What venom makes you ill? And price for me, the pill,
Will he, whose name’s on breast embroidered, then dark juices, spit.

January 2007

Goodbye, Zoltan!