New poetry: Sat-Nav Dreaming - Lost on Planet X

Today's contributor is Andrew Darlington, a poet, novelist, journalist and even a member of the "alternative cabaret/stand up poetry" circuit. You might also want to check out his website Eight Miles Higher, described as "the Blogspot for People Who Don’t Like Blogspots" Recent postings include… interview: Graham Nash Talks About The Hollies and Screamin' Jay Hawkins Puts His Spell On You’. All I can add about sat-nav is it was my encounters with the autogeddon hell that is Milton Keynes that first prompted me to invest in a sat-nav system for my car. http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.com


​Sat-Nav Dreaming: Lost On Planet X
by Andrew Darlington
​
48-hours, & my SatNav’s dreaming
plotting routes through the strange terrain
of this planet beyond the Kuiper Belt,
flip a sharp-left around the Headrow
through a hail of collapsing Stock Market suicides
across insect cities that delineate the edge of empire
when a billion ring-tones scream simultaneously,
I don’t understand where I am, or why I’m here,
this is a weirdness that doesn’t come along every day…
48-hours in my Honda Civic, with the SatNav
weaving me down narrow flea-market lanes &
the endless procession of drowned trawlermen
in post-nuclear cities radiation-shimmering,
along the wet strand where two full moons
are frozen and sand blows in ice-squalls as
staccato as the stylus crackles of a run-in groove
haunted by the phantom of Eddie Cochran,
I don’t understand how I got here,
I don’t understand this trans-Neptunian world
& I don’t understand the row of crucifixions…
I’m hunting Bob Dylan’s lost haiku
with the SatNav glitch urging me on,
its silver screen hard-wired into the
too-many problems in my head 
the valet directs me down the subway
as this deep-space night grows colder,
a girl, once in my class at infants
is now the best trick in town,
I don’t understand how she got here,
I don’t understand why I’m reminiscing
all that lost kissing, as she pours moonlight
into my eyes, I tell her I shortly have to leave
this is getting way too weird for me
I’ve already hung around this world
far longer than I should,
48-hours on Planet X, and I’m wondering,
how much, how much, how much longer