Ode to my Moped

You rusty slab of mobylette bone!
Skewering down the roads of West London,
you wrote your poem on a page of the town.
Yours is the truth and mine are the phrases
as now from the tired slipshod saddle I dismount,
take your wheels for a pen and put it all down.
The long assault on Wimbledon Hill,
affronted to walking-pace, in your own style
you’d groan up – then whistle on, sing past the Common,
pour into Putney through pinhole-like gaps,
squeeze through the lights-trap, soar over water,
burn up to Hammersmith beating all bicycles,
bounce among zebras and road-works to Ealing.
You blind impoverishment of a galaxy that works!
Avoided at sight at a dozen garages,
a chronic invalid addicted to transplant,
you sought out surgeons, attracted their attention,
forced your society on them until flung out!
The stop-go of England has entered your throttle,
the exhaust trumpets threats of “industrial action”,
the chain has epilepsy and the brakes amnesia.
I sell you. And lo and behold, the deed done,
gazelle-like you glide through a last hundred miles.
But now you go – like as not to your grave –
you fraud – hero – diehard! You human being!