Fast Car Fireman

Drawing Jim Spitzer/Poem Ed Coletti

Fast Car Fireman
returns to LA in uniform.
Fast Car, old unafraid,
careens Watts back alleys
like renegade surfer, crazed spelunker
amazed no sniper shoots at him.
Fast Car finds no fires to engage.
Fast Car Fireman slams into inch of space
just that short of wall of words
unfamiliar tagged chineselike symbols.
He won’t confront ineffability.
Fast Car Fireman’s turning radius
even at this high speed—Amazes.
Fast Car Fireman facing another wall opposite.
He’s staring into smile of starlet advertiser
selling something he hasn’t time for,
some computer this or that,
he’s hurtling into this gaping smile Fast Car
Fireman understands he wants no part of.
His reflexes astonish as he executes
yet another u-turn
towards the once undecipherable
now clearly exhorting
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here."
Enter here?" Enter what? No entrance here.
Fast Car Fireman’s
a half-pipe skater,
a ping pong ball,
psychotic metronome, flight of bumblebee,
heatcrazed sewer monkey,
centrifuging astronaut,
stoned guitar riff, endless looping,
Fast Car
Fireman Fast
Car Fireman
Fast Car
Fireman Fast
Car
Fireman

Ed Coletti, 63, graduated from Georgetown University and the Creative Writing Graduate Program at San Francisco  State University
(under Robert Creeley). In addition to the usual national journals and
anthologies, he has published 4 books and also found time for a career
as a counselor. More recently he founded Round Barn Press and the
SoCoCo Reading Series. Ed lives with his wife Joyce in Santa Rosa, California.

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