Megawatts of crackling static discharge slapped
the dirty pavement puddles into rainbow spray;
oily residue and ice blue lightning in the car
as we went racing by milepost twenty five.
The road was thick with stifling chilly powder
dust that hung thick upon pungent red airs –
sunscapes painted daintily with a powder brush
so one might find grace to forgive a saline trace
left on a right cheek, or possibly right on a left,
over the flawless skinned beauty of pageant boy.
Promised never to get over the twenty one odd
positions that are possible on the ample backseat
of that Plymouth sixty five, traced there by a scar -
a memento of the street race with a new blue
nineteen eighty three Mustang convertible.
And then the grey mist parted for a moment,
the curious eyes of twinkling stars stared back
and there passed another flashing streetlight-year.
Can you tell me if it was the dark and handsome
hitchhiker doing a handstand-pirouette by the way
or the brakes that squealed the futile protest
against the oblique, squashbug littered windscreen
when rubber lost its grip on the black tar and life
spun suddenly out of the driver’s control at forty
miles per hour? It did not seem so fast then, but
gears grated in hypothesised regret as they were
forced into a crashing reverse and two bodies
were flung mercilessly where they lay motionless
and panting in the morning-dew wet grass.
One was in ecstasy and oblivious to the cold,
the other broken and haemorrhaged by outrageous
wounds internalised with trauma, ingested like bitter
herb embalming against inevitable carnal decay.
Suffocating breaths, half buried with the sign
in fresh mud proclaiming to all, “No U-Turns.” |
Submission Name: Hotrods and Cold Reality
