FIVE

Taxi 2016

 

I’m glad this taxi

Is without ‘sounds’ –

Loud raucous senseless noise they call ‘music’ –

Stretched love songs that leave one puking –

Silently praying for destinations to materialise.

He fans himself like a tourist in plastic shades,

While guiding the dilapidated craft with

One hand, cruising – (he imagines a sleek silver Toyota or

A smooth black Mazda, the town’s popular models)

In the back seat

I listen to ‘sounds’ of ‘without music’ in silence …

 

The doors rattle in confused rhythm

The front tyres thump in rotational unison,

The axle groans like a dead man

At every turn – not full degreed,

The engine sputters in strangulated protest

While the fan belt whines and whinges,

Is listing … is giving way to steam –

 

I am no mechanic, perhaps what I am

Assessing is in the right terms,

I have to be self-righteous or

Like the taxi, this poem drops dead.

 

MOMOE MALIETOA VON REICHE