when the ducati of life throws you off when you’re in second gear taking the s curves of Hanover

your pit boss tells you to hop back on but fernando threw down his helmet and walked off the track climbing over the hay bales that lined the chain linked fences, unzipped his fire retardant leather suit and retreated into the adjoining forest.

quitter, his crew was heard yelling in a variety of languages and he thought to himself fucking ride that shit yourself then fuckers and walked and walked and walked. eventually he couldn’t hear the whines of the motorbikes and the screams of the crowds and he climbed out of his advertising, stripped off his long johns and climbed an inviting tree in nothing but his lucky boxer shorts that said chico’s bail bonds.

as he climbed he saw he had a different perspective of the forest and saw it was bigger than he thought. he saw the race below him and couldn’t make out who was winning and eventually grew disinterested when all that it looked like were colors and shapes circling and circling. motion but no movement. action but and no progress. volume but no sound.

he kept climbing and discovered something very uncomfortable in his right boot and realized it was his secret diary, just a little spiral notebook with a few pages and a pencil stolen from his country club golf course. he sat on a branch staring at a clear-cut section of the forest thinking about a happier time when he was an ice cream man during a summer vacation from college, and he thought of a girl he met on his route and wrote the first chapter of a poem that he’d never finish.

he wrote:

in the richest meadow of a wooded plain

Where clouds and rain and pain,

are as

rare as a train.

You take your showers by standing outside

in the sun

and letting its rays soak you.

While the birds hum

and the children play, and the day

and the air and your hair

are all one.

every once in a while you sigh

and say, “Where the heck am I?”

It’s then that you know,

(although you sorta thought so)

that’s you’re on vacation

or at recess

or at home

or in Love.

and lucky for all of us, a huge gust of wind took the world champion by surprise and sent him to his violent and dramatic death.

blushing: at moxie’s photo essay

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