It’s as if the car broke down
on our way to the future.
And instead of waiting on the highway
for roadside assistance,
we moved into the car.
I’m working from a plastic camping desk in my garage.
A two-and-a-half grand Macbook
on an shaky thirty dollar table
connected to the world through an invisible signal
to a box attached to my phone line
and ten-twenty-four by seven-sixty-eight dots of light.
You’re reading this from a pixelated miracle.
OMG. Have we any idea?!
On the other side of the world
people in lockdown
are literally starving to death.
They’ll never read this.
I can still taste breakfast in my mouth.
I can still taste the bitter irony of this poem.
And we’re asking ourselves:
Was the future we were headed towards
at breakneck speed
actually where we wanted to go?
Weren’t we already living some
kind of Groundhog Day existence
on a carefully crafted highway
to somewhere we actually believed
was created for us all?
And we’re asking ourselves:
Has the mid-crisis life we find ourselves in
got something to say?
Have the trees and the seas
waving for our attention
from across the eight lanes of progress
got something to say?
Does our restless heart
have something to say
as we gaze into the wilderness
through a finger-smudged window
of a now broken down car
we could never really afford
in the first place.
Mid-Crisis Life
by David Tensen
April 2020