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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhguEc-mk1Y&ab_channel=THUNDERJACKSON

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A downpour, torrential rain

And he drove with the window

Wide,

Wide open …

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It’s hard to say why he did that:

Why he so adamantly exposed a shoulder

To the elements, or the open air.

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Might’ve been because he drove a piece of s**t

And he’d rather leave the window open

Then have to run the air conditioner; 

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Might’ve been that he had an eye on the gas counter,

A crooked needle

That always seemed to bend the wrong arm;

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Might’ve been that he felt hot,

Suffocated,

Maybe he just needed the space to breathe;

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Or maybe the stuffy, artificial fragrance

Of the inside of his cheap, Toyota Corolla

Symbolized something for him - 

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Maybe there was more to it than I’d originally saw.

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As I watched him drive - in his old,

Plaid jacket, a wristwatch hiding

His black tattoos - I felt that I could see it

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For a second.

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I felt that I could see the grueling 9-5,

The liquor store stops on Friday,

The odor of cheap wine and cigarettes;

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I could see the shallow patronizations, the shrugged

Shoulders, the stoic bemusing beneath a blanket

Of pavement, and alarm-clocks, fast-food wrappers,

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CBC radio;

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I could see that, within the cab of that car,

Beneath the cracked glass of his windshield

And the furious creaking of his wipers,

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Behind the expressionless furrow of his brow,

The slow and rhythmic revving

Of corner, after hill, after stretch and stoplight,

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That this, somehow, was a man in jail - 

In a straight-jacket, a Sisyphean nightmare - 

And that to drive cab with the window shut

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Would be the same as if to kill him.

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                As he drove, his taxi swung by a nearby gutter

                And an oncoming semi cut into a puddle;

                The water splashed right into his open window,

                Across his face, his nose, his horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

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                                I don’t think I saw him blink.

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