SUGAR & SPITE
SUGAR & SPITE
*
Once upon a time, in Far-off days,
Teenage Jealousy could corrode your guts like
Sugar in a petrol tank,
sweet Fuel for futile acts
of petty spite.
*
These days of course we’re taught
to keep a lid on our emotions,
and every petrol cap now has a lock.
Perhaps that’s why Road-Rage
is all the rage instead and we
just take it out on total Strangers.
*
But I decided that doing that every day
is just driving a dump truck
down a dead end street.
Sooner or later you will hit a Wall.
Don’t think you can blithely take
your Emotional Baggage out for a drive
and then dump it by the side of the Highway
either.
Its Anti-Social to Litter
for one thing and besides,
what if two or three of that Litter survive?
Then the next thing you know you’ve got
Feral Emotions prowling through the undergrowth,
lurking under bridges and overpasses
like a Facebook Troll and
pouncing on anything brainless that twitters.
*
Keep going like that you’ll end up
as some sad, elderly Loner in a boarding-house,
leaking bitter acids all over the carpet
like an old, discarded car battery.
After that it’s just a short,
trip by tow-truck to the wrecking yard
and people picking over the carcass on Weekends
to see if there’s any of your vital organs
worth recycling.
Or you’ll sit there rusting amongst
the other hollowed, burnt out bombs,
until some Junior Jihaddis
keen for a Terminal Joy Ride,
spot your Potential and take you home
to work on you in the garage out the back
till you’re re-tooled into a suitable Vehicle
for the transport of Contentious Materials.
*
It’s no wonder some people never learn to drive,
instead rely on Public Transport all their lives
and leave their travelling needs
in smooth, Professional hands.
Yes, Relationships can travel rocky roads,
perhaps it’s best to let Sub-contractors extract
any Emotions secreted by their glands,
whenever some social lubrication is needed
to grease the wheels of their Career..
or prove that they’re a Man.
ENVOI
And if these rear-view reflections,
dear Reader, are driving you to the Drink,
don’t worry, there’s always a bottle-shop open
somewhere nearby here, I think.
****
***
The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet,
President of the Kurilpa Institute of Creativity Inc.,
and an Ordained Minister of the Church of the Universe
AND the Church of Spiritual Humanism.
Will you miss him when he’s gone?
***
Reverend Hellfire's Sunday Sermon 