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"Hey Stampede, how 'bout a poem?"

Taurus lived as poet in New England, even published some material, before he moved to the desert and became a vigilante.

Zachary Norman, writer and lead designer on Interstate '76, provided some notes to each poem.

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Looking out the window of your room onto a wet rainy day

Main street under a slate grey afternoon sky

The light on your face is soft and dim under the lace curtain

And the streets are empty

In the distance, there is a flash and a rumble

Clouds sail the sky like giant wooden ships

On a blackened evergreen sea

Capped with foam


Zachary: This one is captured from a moment of personal history in Delaware. I was attending the wedding of my best friend and ex-girlfriend (long story - but a good one) and I ended hooking up with her younger sister, during the reception! I spent the night and next day with her at her place. I captured the moment in a poem.

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I'm a storm torrent across a slate-gray sea

I rush in billowed reflections a fast, fast dark sky over an Edinburgh's meadow's wet

I bolt white high through snowfall cold

I am lightning in the night

I sprint like fire across a match head

And leap across lakes of dream-stuff

Over ancient walls

Past armies fast as fast is

Faster than quicksilver can fall into the sun

I, bounding, prance unstoppable to you

My all

My everything dream


Zachary: Again a personal one - I lived in Edinburgh for a while. I was in love and wrote about the feeling. This is my favorite poem - of those I have authored.

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It's a high pitched sound

Hot rubber eternally pressing against a blackened pavement

A wheel is forever

A car is infinity times four


Zachary: This one is from Taurus. He's playing around with the sound of the tire on the pavement and his general love of cars.

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From where I lie

The oceans are deep and dry

Empty

The sky is black smoke bearing winter's frozen gifts

It will snow in this land for a thousand years

And I will sleep under it...forever


Zachary: Another one from ol' Taurus. I made him obsessed with death and notion "the END" - a true terminus. It has to do with a history I made for him in which his family was murdered when he lived in Boston, murdered by early auto-felons.

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My dream

It takes place in the white room, in back

The plaster walls echo sounds

The brown wood floor is cold and solid beneath my brown, bare feet

This place was a nursery before

Now it is empty

Save for the hollow sound of my voice


Zachary: Again from Taurus - he muses on the nursery of his child, emptied after her death and the selling of all his furniture. I wrote it with the images of drafty, woody, Back Bay brownstones in mind.

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This window above the Charles

Wire embedded in cold frames the world

Across white space to the frozen shore

I see through curls and eddies of falling snow

The once green field

And a birthday on the grass

A party for three in the Boston sun

All now covered with snow


Zachary: This one is a mix of Taurus' history and my history. The poem depicts a view I had from one of the windows at Boston University, where I got my undergrad degree. Through Taurus' eyes I placed the melancholy memory of his child's birthday. This one was written for Interstate with my memories of Boston.

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Copley brought me to a monument

Quiet before the crunch of solitary footfall through ice

An obelisk stands in the winter city

Its relief tells of a death and justification

The precipitation of war

And my own memories


Zachary: I once took the green line and got off at Copley in Boston at the park. I was upset and needed to take a walk - get some distance and some clarity. The air was brisk and cold and the wind had hardened a layer of ice on the snow. It was night and I walked alone in the park and found myself in front of a monument, a memorial to the American colonists who were fired upon by redcoats and died at that very spot. I wrote the poem during I'76 about the memory of that powerful moment.

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I'm silver smooth

Bathed ten times a second in an aerosol fire

Five thousand degrees in here

I course with electricity from my feet to my tongue

Where I vomit a torque-delivering spark


Zachary: (no notes for this poem).

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It's nicked at the edges

And leans backwards, almost reclining

Grass grows in tufts near where it enters the earth

Its words are worn with time

And its stained face is drawn long with wear


Zachary: A headstone - A grave marker near Harvard square.

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It's malleable, my design

Things just bolt on here and there

Real clean scraped face

A new gasket fitted and...

Tightened and...

I'm done.


Zachary: Designing cars.

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She is my girl

Pearl white, slick and sexy

Never complains, always faithful

She cuts the air like a charging buffalo

In her arms, it's quiet

Her engine whispers to me:

"It's gonna be just fine"


Zachary: Taurus's feelings about Eloise - his car.

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They twist like quad-coiled vipers

Feeding on combustion's waste

Black as ink and hot as Hades they join below

Eternally in shadow, unless of course, I roll

They belt a rumbling and vibrate fear

Into the bones of my foe


Zachary: Exhaust headers...

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It's not a happy place, between the dusk and the dawn

Deep below the well-lit and open spaces

I wait under the under

For them to come and rip me asunder

Tearing my core until morning


Zachary: It was from Taurus's mind - the torment of the murder.

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Glass, flat and forever

It stretches out and never stops

Unless it finds the hills whose lines rise to mountain peaks

Far as far can be


Zachary: This one and the next are simply about the freedom Taurus feels out in the desert - far from the constraint and memories of the city.

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There is a breeze out here

That filters through the scrub

Over hills and down through long dry riverbeds

Across the Texas blacktop

It cools the skin and brings the most subtle song in the world

To the ears of those who listen


Zachary: I grew up in the desert. It can be the most unbelievably beautiful place - I wanted to try and capture a little of it in words.


Source: Jeff Wofford.com

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