The Long and Winding Road Rage

“Don’t pull ‘is ‘air! Don’t pull ‘is ‘air!”

A beast with two backs is holding up the traffic,

writhing and rolling across bruise-black tarmac

in one hundred unblinking headlamp spotlights

where phlegm flecks of night rain shred each beam.

Paunchy punchy red-faced gold-dye ringlets man

                                    v

stout stalwart sweaty shaven-headed man

in biting fighting swearing denim-tearing embrace

as wintry rush-hour roundabout traffic gawps,

guffaws its revving engines in stalled transfixion.

The creature, four juddering legs, four twining arms,

rears perilously then collapses onto shiny metal,

the tapering bonnet of Slaphead Man’s insulted van.

He has a handful hank of curled mullet in his grasp.

From the passenger seat of Ringlet Man’s insulted car

comes a woman’s outraged cry: “Don’t pull ‘is ‘air!

Don’t pull ‘is ‘air! Don’t pull ‘is ‘air!”

Noble appeal to some unwritten code in humanity?

How quickly bleak tragedy becomes bleaker comedy.

Is this the potent plea from our United Drivetime lips,

beseeching playground bullies everywhere:

“Don’t pull ‘is ‘air…don’t pull ‘is ‘air”?