You know how those refrigerator
poetry magnets work? You buy a
set and leave them on your fridge,
and people come by and assemble
them into little poems.
And how many of us have been stuck
in a commute, staring at long lines
of trucks? Many of which are blank,
no company logo or cute graphic.
A
canvas waiting. A 21st century
mobile sheet of paper.
Well, be bored no more! All we need
is truck-sized versions of the
refrigerator magnets. Participating
truck owner/operators get a word or two,
how many depends on the size of the
truck. They attach a word or two
to the side of the truck.
And now the magic part: the poetry
happens when trucks happen to line
up next to each other! Yes, it's
random acts of poetry, waiting
to emerge from nothing and make
sense or not, and then to fade away
as traffic separates the trucks.
It's found art, impermanent art;
it's rock lyrics waiting to happen;
it's food for thought; it's ideas
about to gell, suggestions to be
put forward, pithy sayings and
admonitions and reminders and queries
and innermost thoughts to be
expressed and displayed and
then dissolved into traffic again.
So what if it mostly doesn't make
sense or generate anything profound.
That's why you let it keep happening
and wait for the great ones. Of
course, you do try to seed the
results by picking good words.
Same as the fridge magnet makers
do; good initial word choice helps.
A light year beyond looking for
clever/cute license plates!
A group expression! No individual
person creates the poem.
A delight for weary commuter eyes!
Burma-Shave on the move!
Language in motion, poems on the
move, instant literature
engaging traffic, or possibly
the other way around, but either
way a fresh new short poem every
day, every way.
Now, instead of resenting the fact
that more and more trucks are on
the roads, you'll look forward to
more and longer trucks, as that
builds towards critical mass to
enable more and longer poems.
Of course, it doesn't have to
be magnets to attach the words,
and presumably wouldn't be.
Instead just some common way of
attaching words to panel trucks.
Signs or paint or something.