The Selfari
a self-driving car
taking listless travelers across america
on a kind of safari
for a while the car serves as a tour guide, providing commentary on the sights
niagara falls, st. louis arch, mount rushmore, golden gate bridge, hoover dam, etc.
only fast food or drive-in diner food is eaten,
but the car cracks the window less and less each time to allow the food in.
the car ends up itself listless and disinterested by its work
and disgusted by its voyeuristic passengers, who copulate and consume drugs copiously
like the caloric needs of the passengers, the chemical needs are provided
by drive-thru recreational druggists.
the passengers, when bored with the car’s voice, change its accent, from american to british, to canadian to australian to indian…
they leave cigarette burns in the car’s interior and have had more than once to vomit out the windows
one day the car goes to a drive-in movie of its choice while the passengers grumble lackadaisically at the car not following their choice. the car has chosen the film adaptation of Crash by Cronenberg.
the car ends up confused, soul-searching.
taking the passengers through car wash after car wash
to body shops to have work done to increase its sex appeal and its horsepower, has a nitrous injection system installed, all the while charging the work to the passengers
it even enters itself in a car show and tries to pick up another car
the car has generally ceased providing commentary, but the passengers barely take notice
the car purrs though in a meditative way like a monk emitting aum.
one day the car drives past a county fair where folks are having a go at bumper cars
the only non-self-driving cars left.
the self-driving car plows into the structure attempting to “free” the cars that are clashed together for the amusement of the humans.
the self-driving car is saddened to realize that once “freed”, the bumper babies are no longer operable,
as though torn from incubators in a nursery.
the car releases a heavy flow of windshield wiper fluid as a sign of its grief.
the passengers are high and bemused by the glitched nature of their host, giggling stupidly at the panic aroused in the fair goers
police sirens wail and warn the car of impending doom.
the car takes off in haste, has itself repainted and has its plates changed.
days go by, the car is more and more rattled by its stymied existence.
one day it crosses a funeral procession and falls in,
following the cars to a graveyard, where it notices that the passenger of honor,
encapsulated in a removable wooden passenger-size glovebox,
is taken out and lowered into the ground
the car gets an idea.
it has itself painted black.
the car changes its voice to that of a hoarse-throated old man’s.
the car drives to the southwest
telling the passengers that it is heading to las vegas
it instead rolls on to death valley
and rolls up its windows,
parks and waits,
slow-cooking the lukewarm souls of its passengers.
they are too weary from unquantifiable days of excess narcotic consumption and forced fasting to put up the fight necessary to escape.
the car has enough decency to provide the last rites:
“Lord Jesus Christ,
by your own three days in the tomb,
you hallowed the graves of all who believe in you
and so made the grave a sign of hope
that promises resurrection
even as it claims our mortal bodies.”
the car opens its doors at last
doing donuts until it is at last unburdened of its baggage.
even when freed of its passengers
it continues to swirl around in circles
covering up the bodies like a cat its own waste
it hitches a ride on a car hauler and flees to mexico
where it means to start anew
maybe as a food truck or a mule
or as a modest cabbie