Tug Dumbly - Popular Mechanics

Popular Mechanics

A calendar of grease monkeys
cheesecaked over bonnets,
popped and glistening
as hot oily nuts,
all sultry with jacks
and pouty with spanners,
in banana-peeled overalls
and virile bandanas, dirty rags
blooming from big easy pockets.

Here’s Manuel, Mr March,
at the hood of your hatch,
dark souling your manifold.
October is Mario, wheaten mane
of a lion, dripping gold
to tease your timing chain;
November’s Juan whistles
his eye along a dipstick,
a matador primed to sword a bull,
and no question Pablo, Mr May,
will drain your sump to the dregs
and refill you real full.

I like Gordon, Mr June,
a man for the cooler months,
overalled in green, a string bean
relic of the BP Empire,
furrowed head balder
than your flat spare tyre;
concave chest over speed-hump pot
and chicaning vertebrae
clapped close to the grind.

He Charles Bronson squints
from a face hard won
as your duco’s baked-birdshit enamel;
the keroed smuts
splintered deep in his thumb
say he won't steer you wrong
or sweet-talk frilly extras;
He’s in the game for love,
not glamour.

Whenever he resurrects your car
from the dead it’s like he sucks
its wounds into his own battered
body, like a shock-absorbing Christ.
He’s no Mustang, like Mr December,
but he’s a steady finisher,
and as he brushes a fly from his
cooling tea and peels a pink slip
for your bomby Corolla, you know
your nipples have been greased.