Thoughts on Moving Fast

Travel Poems — Germany

German Autobahn

Fast flying through this flat world of wind turbines and telephone wires, sizzling with a thousand moving messages.

What does the future feel like?

The future is fast.

We in our tiny bubble, trusting a stranger to drive 200km an hour down the highway and it feels like we are barely moving. We could be in the tip of one of those turbine arms, which do appear to be turning slowly, dragging leisurely through the morning, but it’s a trick of the eye.

Isolate the tip and watch it whistling, slicing the air into a thousand pieces. It could take you apart, scatter a flock of birds, treat the highway to a banquet.

And my body, against all odds and rational reason, falls asleep. I drift inside this liminal cage, warm with fondled air and false security.

This is the future: faster, smoother, silent.

Humans were never meant to travel this fast

Humans were never -

Humans were always

and always

moving

faster and faster.

And one day,

perhaps we will be meant to travel this fast. Our bodies will align to the scream of the nation — to a hurtling, vibrating existence. Shooting down highways, across clouds, through media.

The never-resters, the tight-chesters, the red light testers, at the desk for a second and already -

bored. Breathing fast, clickclick the lights — the trams — like yellowbug shuttles, slinging bodies down the tunnels and into the night. Dizzy dizzy, I’m so busy, with the mess on my screen, streetsigns mean nothing to me I cannot read I cannot see I cannot breath I’m high on caffeine she’s next to me she grinds her teeth I never sleep I never sleep I truly

cannot breath.

She falls.

We’ve adapted the speed of our lives to match the rate of our hysteria.

I can’t breathe, she gasps, kneeling on the floor of the tram — which doesn’t stop — and people crowd her like cattle, shuffling dead eyed in the doorways and her silk shirt ripples with her heartbeats.

I cannot breathe

Breathe godammit!

She reaches up to grab at anything, to pull back the lever on the day.

Stop this one.

I want to get off.

I feel her ribs grinding as if they are my own,

and life speeds on by both of us.

Speed

To go fast:

Think of a race in the dark, think of your heart, think of one foot in the gutter and a bubbling laugh.

Think of a swing, taking you up up and your stomach down.

Think of a cart rolling down a hill, think of the wind, think of your brother and his maniac shriek, think of the tyre competitions, think of the trampoline.

You are a bird: you are a swallow at dusk, skimming the rooftops, you’re a cat hunting, you’re lightning across the street, you’re sailing with a surfboard and a sheet.

Think of me:

closing the car door,

five hours later,

smoothing my hair, stretching my neck, grabbing my bag

and -

onward.