Loudon Blues #1


One night,
I found myself on the web site
which claimed to have autopsy photos of various dead NASCAR drivers

and it did

this was the web site Teresa Earnhardt fought to shut down

I only saw the thumbnails
I did't pay for the full-sized pictures

I recognized Dale Earnhardt and Neil Bonnett
Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin's pictures were not there

Earnhardt and Bonnett didn't look dead
their color was good
they weren't bruised or disfigured
they didn't even look like they were in pain

they didn't look much worse
than any other driver looks
at the end of a long race

Bonnett just looked tired

Earnhardt looked cheerful
he was half-smiling
he looked like he had gotten a joke
which no one else was getting

Loudon Blues #47



when I see you
I feel the same way I feel
when I stand by the yellow line

the cars zoom by,
just a few feet away,
just on the other side of the catchfence

I can smell the racing fuel
I can feel the ground shaking
I can even tell that some cars
are running especially good
or especially bad

but I really can't see what is happening

I can only tell who's leading by looking at the leader board---
the leader board is a long way away
and it is not that easy to read
and it only shows the top ten car numbers

a PA system blares announcements
and I really can't hear what the announcers are saying

that's how I feel
when I see you

Loudon Blues #100




it's stressful when things end
it's stressful when they begin
it's even more stressful
when one thing ends while another begins

but I don't believe that the pain of one thing ending
should dissuade you from enjoying the joy
of the other thing beginning

it's all garbage anyway
none of it is real
so throw it all away
put it in a bag and throw it away!

we are all unreal
we are all garbage

the goddess is the only person here who is real
she is the only one of us who really exists
she's the only one who is really real!
and even she is just a reflection of reality
she is not reality itself

so don't get stressed out about it

Loudon Blues #119


my feet are floating two inches off the ground
cartoon hearts are cascading from the crown of my skull
my eyes are dilated
my skin is flushed
my heartbeat is speeding up

my eyes are open wide
my mouth is open wide
my legs are open wide
everything is open wide

open wide enough for everything to go in
and open wide enough for everything to come out

there is no good reason for this
but it still feels good

Loudon Blues #139



it sucks being stuck in this traffic jam
but it could be worse

I could be squashed under 110 stories of rubble

I could be a charred corpse

I could be a few fragments of myself
in a plastic bag

I could be a handful of dust
or I could be nothing at all

being stuck in this traffic jam is a blessing
it is the greatest blessing I have ever been given
it is the greatest blessing any being anywhere will ever be given

I am very grateful
to be stuck in this traffic jam!

Loudon Blues #154



he says he can read you like a book
but a woman is a book
written in 8-point type
with new chapters written every month
and with old chapters being constantly revised

much of the book is written in a foreign language
and the illustrations are pretty
but don't always go with the text

most divorces happen
because the husband fails
to keep up with his reading

Loudon Blues #200



"tay-yuntz!
its gonna get tay-yuntz!"
that's what Darrell Waltrip said
about 10 laps before the end
of the Daytona 500

it was the Sunday after Valentines Day
2001

DW said this again later
when things got even more tense
the white flag was waved
to signal one lap to go

"tay-yuntz!
like I said before,
now it's really gonna get tay-yuntz!"
he said (or words to that effect)

Michael Waltrip, Darrell's brother, in the blue 15 car, was in first place!
Dale Earnhardt Jr., in the red 8 car, was in second place!
Dale Earnhardt Sr., in the black 3 car, was in third place!

Dale Senior
was not strong enough to catch his son
but he was strong enough to block the cars that were behind him

it looked like it was going to be a storybook ending
and was a storybook ending, but not from a happy storybook

between Turns 3 and 4
the black Goodwrench Chevy got loose and hit the wall
he didn't spin, he didn't roll over,
he didn't even smoke his tires

Dale Earnhardt simply hit the wall
I thought this is the worst thing that would happen all year
but it wasn't

Excerpts from "Loudon Blues"
Copyright © 2005 Timothy Horrigan

For more info, contact:

Timothy Horrigan
7A Faculty Road
Durham, NH 03824
USA
ph: 1-603-868-3342
email: Timothy.Horrigan@alumni.USC.edu

 I am not sure what to do with these poems. For one thing, they document a period of my life when I was totally wrong about just about everything. I spent a lot of energy struggling with my ex-friend's husband — noone was shot, noone's house got burned down, but it was still scary and unnecessarily risky. I feel even wronger after accidentally discovering that their daughter contributed a piece to a Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul book (not the original, a later volume.) When I scored tests for Measured Progress, I dreaded essays by kids who wrote about the Chicken Soup books, because they never had anything to say. But my ex-friend's daughter had a lot to say — especially about her father. She wrote a haunting little essay (which looks to me like it started out as a satire of student essays, but it ended up being very moving) — and at one point she says:

My dad tells me that fighting people are sly snakes, and he warns me to stay away from them. He says that when a man is in the company of snakes, sooner or later he will get poison spit in his eye.

Before I can finish Loudon Blues, I think I should wait a little while longer to make sure that the poison has been washed out of everyone's eyes.— well, out of my own eyes, at least.