iPod Divination--The Result

From a couple of weeks ago:

Take your MP3 Player, put it on shuffle, and shuffle through the first five songs.


Now write a poem using something from two of the titles, something from three of the songs' lyrics, and one thematic concern from a song.

Here are my songs:

The Primitives, "Way Behind Me."
The Innocence Mission, "My Waltzing Days Are Over/Minta's Waltz"
Daft Punk, "Da Funk/Dadftendirekt" (WTF?!)
Billy Bragg & Wilco, "Christ For President"
Of Montreal, "Art Snob Solutions"

***

I had promised a poem, so here it is:

From a Car Way Behind Me, “Da Funk” Shook My Windows


The streets glare back at the headlights as the unpeopled
city winds around my head like ribbon, and I had hoped

the bass from the other car didn’t know any names or principles . . . that it could thaw
the built up civilization out of its one collective dream—the voice of the drum

guns behind me rich in its violence, and the pavement wet with rain
shimmers with the speaker’s thud, a sort of pulse like a fly

in a glass, its wing-flits rippling the water outward to the mouth,
and I could feel in my stomach the shift of gears as I accelerate to leave

the sound, and the moon out now, from behind clouds turns everything blue,
and the aquarium light tells a kind of truth—that I don’t want

to slow the car to let the other driver pass, that all the new light from his high-beams
and mine would set the night on fire, that our breaths

were vapor, phosphor . . . our breaths were leaving our bodies
in waves, redundant and slow—

***

So, obviously the title borrows from two of the songs. Thematically, I went with the Daft Punk. Buried somewhere are lyrics from "My Waltzing Days Are Over," "Art Snob Solutions," and "Christ as President."

***

Ack! My margins are all messed up. Well, just imagine the lines are staggered with a space between couplets . . .