How is it, then

when I’m track-stuck, rut-bestraddled

on the everyday-way to schools and markets

- the maintenance/sustenance trek -

through the suburban dessert creep

that every time a vehicle approaches from the other direction

(beetling down our one-way runnel on collision course

like suicide dodgem cars, head on)

it is I, on the least desert-worthy wheels

who always ends up, gear-crashingly, veering aside

the old car nearly stalling in the dust dunes

lunging and bucketing over the ridges and grooves

while their lordships in 4WD glory

sail by unslowed, unswerved.

 

It took years to realize this had been going on for

…years!

At last, brought to face it, kid-nagged:

how feeble can you get? don’t you see… etc

 

Ergh?

Hey! wait a mo!

Yep!  why me every time?

Hey you road-hog you!

Why don’t you get outta the way for once?

gnashing my tooth and clutch

 begrim with the powdered silt of battle

- rabble-rousing rising Mars for the occasion

to outface the affronting army

…represented in this instance, let’s face it

by an old lop-sided jalopy with a goat and four wives in the back…

to assert my own equal rights - to be unequal

by the newfound hypnotic remote control technique

by which I fix/project my bellicose intent, Pluto assisting

on the approaching truck dust-bowling towards me

and, hey presto! it magically clears from my path

politely out of the way

come camel, come Toyota Quicksand Cruiser

and I sail by, nose in air

 

…………….

 

Post-script

 

But…how dreadfully rude!

- me now the upstart rut-hog, the pretender in person.

I almost turn about to rush and apologize, explain.

It’s no good, kiddos!

Libra is Libra is Libra ad inf.

At most I can compromise

and shift one wheel out of one track…

Yeah! snort they.

 

1989