The Day that Houston Stood Still

This is a piece I performed at at the Starry Nite Arts Festival. It is about something many of us all over the United States of America, but especially here in Houston, confront every day, that will unfortunately get worse and worse in the coming decades–specifically automobile traffic, and the nightmare reality of our car-dominated sprawling suburban hellscape. I want to consider, what has it done to us?

You have come to a stop.

No–that’s not quite right,

you didn’t cease movement,

there was never any movement to begin with.

There’s no way to move

to and from on this road.

Newton’s laws seem to be irrelevant

in a place that knows no action or reaction.

In this poster child for urban sprawl

where the automobile

has reigned as king so long

that calling it a dictator for life

would be an understatement.

What has happened to you?

You just wanted to go to work.

Or school.

Or get groceries.

Or meet friends.

Or just live, really.

Ten million people share the same fate,

forever trapped in iron cages

on roads paved towards oblivion.

We are all mannequins

twisted to fit into the shape befitting driver’s seats.

And despite being tightly packed together

onto a highway from hell,

within touching distance of each other,

we will never know one another’s gaze or touch.

For if loneliness was once an epidemic,

it is now a massacre.