Scribblings

How to have a midlife crisis without a driving license.

I was cruising,

losing time,

A passenger with myself

As I'd never learned to drive.

No scenic routes

Or Tourist coach photo blitzing

Places of interest.

No common sense shortcuts.

Trapped in the monotony

Of the motorway,

Under the influence

My destiny dripped away.

People might joke and titter

That instead of two, 

it's three kids

You have.

A grown man of forty who cannot drive,

Whose headlights are dimmer,

Whose dipstick is dry.

There is (in the vernacular of the car)

Too much junk in the trunk.

His carburetor is choking on smoking.

Young joyriders turn up their noses

At the rusting getaway hair,

Eroding back from the forehead,

Making doughnuts out from the crown.

An option no used car salesman could sell 

As an optimal convertible hoodwinked bargain,

Or a solar panel.

And under the hood, nothing runs smoothly.

You have to pull on his choke

To get him up in the morning.

They could never guess,

That when you found my mangled wreckage,

Distorted beyond compare.

That when you opened your jaws of life

And pulled from the misshapen chassis

The pedestrian,

The walker,

The passer-by.

We could walk

Hand in hand

From the wine-stained

Skid marked crash.

Passing faces,

Not blinding headlights.

Sit

In the moment,

Not in traffic.

Not held down

By seatbelts.

But free.