All the Times I Should Have Died
Four drunk
young men
sooling down
Bulli Pass
early Sunday
morning
in a Morris
Minor ute
two in the
front
two in the
back
when suddenly
the one
beside the
driver contorts
his bean pole
frame
in the tiny
cab squats up
on the seat
pulls down
his daks and
presses his
arse cheeks
against
the rear
window to chuck
a browneye
fair in the face
of his mates
in the tray
and any
traffic following
all of them
howling
tears of mad
mirth
ripped back
at right angles
across the
cheek
like
streamers in the wind
by the
bucketing velocity
and the sheer
joy of idiocy
as they wind
screaming
like a bright
red bullet
fired by the
homicidal god of piss
down the
mountain
with that
little eleven hundred
wound howling
to the max
gearstick
thrashing the whole
thing
clattering like a cage
of shopping
trolleys
swerving side
to side
bodies in the
back thrown
like sacks of
dead weight
hungry for
the gorge
lurching
screeching
into the
curves with the
epileptic
judder of a sideshow ride
or
shot-to-shit Battle of Britain
Hurricane
barely controllable
spewing smoke
and oil
clipping
trees trying
to make it
back to base ...
though here
that’s really not the case.
Just four
young lairs
in a little
red clown car
sheering a
mountain, off their face
heirs to it
all, ripping and tearing
the air to
the future.
and that was all back in the day
ReplyDeleteas only the young fellers
say
today
yep, in my day we never said back in the day, but someday we might look back on today and who knows what we'll say anyway?
Deleteit has such speed of sound, and that ripping and tearing the air to the future, in foreboding....but that was yesterday, in the luck of it
ReplyDeleteyes, in the luck of it ... and all the times we come that close without even knowing it
Delete
ReplyDelete...and lucky
I can look back
on all the times
I should've died
but the aches & pains
where do they come from?
they're retribution for not dying
Delete... as in
age shall not weary THEM