The Angry Gods of Transport

 —Poetry by Neil Fulwood, Nottingham, England
—Photos Courtesy of Public Domain 

CONTRAFLOW

The gods of transport infrastructure
are angry. They demand laudation,
obeisance. They demand respect
in Aretha Franklin terms of magnitude.

The free flow of traffic offends them.
Uncluttered bus lanes offend them.
Cars offend them, swinging merrily
into workplace car parks bang on time.


They have visited a plague of potholes,
a reigning down of raised ironwork,
a weltuntergang of widening foretold
by the exponential increase in road users.

And lo, the acolytes come as summoned,
some by van, some by flatbed. Some
by saloon, side panel decals demarcated
with the livery of traffic management.

And lo, they come with theodolites,
distance meters, hard hats and clipboards.
They set out cones, weigh down A-frames
with sandbags and bolt into place

warning signs running the gamut
from ROAD WORKS AHEAD to ROAD
NARROWS, and just for the cosmic
shits and giggles, temporary traffic lights,

four-way control: a stop-start sequence
slower even than Peckinpah slo-mo.
And lo, with their toytown smelting tins
to fill in potholes like patchwork quilts,

with their sci-fi behemoth Barber-Greenes
resurfacing lengthy but incomplete stretches;
lo, with their battalions of heavy plant
roadside-parked and unattended; and lo,

with their checklists and risk assessments,
their buzzwords on the theme of health
and safety, their PR pushed-for accreditation
as considerate contractors … they bow down 


to the gods of transport infrastructure,
promise chaos, delay; the renunciation
of God, St Christopher and Henry T. Ford;
an endless proliferation of red lines


snaking from here to home on the satnav.

 

 

 

 
 

FOG

The long route, out into the sticks,
two-and-a-half hours the full round trip

byways and potholes, hidden dips
liable to flood at the first spit

of rain. Hedgerows up for a go
at the paintwork, low-hanging branches

fancying a crack at the mirrors.
And today, fog. Horror movie tendrils

seep their damp grasp from field
to roadside, pooling the camber,

grey-washing hazards till tyres
are shredded, suspension rattled,

tracking thrown out with a jolt
fit to rearrange molecules. Fog

mapping out the creeping nasty fun
of your own personal unasked-for 


Dickens homage: Fog everywhere.
Fog up the side of the bus, fog

in the blind spot, fog smearing
the headlights like a dirty protest. Fog

tagging the windscreen—filthy,
off-yellow, T.S. Eliot fog. Thicker gouts

rolling in, a dull leperous glow
at the centre; the fog of black tides

and coastal folklore. Fog as diminisher
of distance, trickster of perspective; 


fog blanking out the logistics
of developing hazard and response time.

 

 

 

 

SALAMANDER


Basically a sheet metal fuel tank
on four spiky legs. The exclamation mark

of its flue modelled on the smokestack


of Wild West locos; capped 

by an unsymmetrical circumflex.
User's guide: knock aside

the cover flap, fill with paraffin,
dunk lath of wood in same.
Pay attention: this is the non-

health-and-safety part. Strike match
(arm's length) against said lath, watch
acrid gout of smoke roll back

from blue-edged flame, thrust
burning hunk of wood
into paraffin. Remove at *whomph*,

beat to charred remnant on concrete
floor. Clout cover back with flat
of hand. Never mind 


the turps, the sawdust thrown
down to sop up oil change
spillage, the hundred-and-one


ways the garage could have gone up—
it didn't. There's a lesson in this. 

 

 

 

 

MISFORTUNE WITH A KNAPSACK
(after Anna Akhmatova) 


Whistling through Tyrolean meadows,
stereotypical in national dress.

Knapsacking ‘round Nepal, all hippie beads
and selfie-stick. Lurking in Lebanon

on a false passport, wavelengthed
to the political situation. 


Unholstered in a Hollywood fuck pad,
soaking up those Ellroy vibes.

Torpid in Honduras, draining the last
of the day as the sun goes down,

tomorrow’s edition in his back pocket.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Resist much, obey little.

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

__________________

Welcome back to Neil Fulwood today! This has been a week of visiting Brits: Ian Copestick last Sunday, Neil Fulwood today, and frequent contributor Stephen Kingsnorth. 

 

Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, England, where he still lives and works; he first visited the Kitchen in 2015, and has appeared several times since then. He has four collections out with Shoestring Press: No Avoiding It; Can’t Take Me Anywhere; Service Cancelled; and The Point of the Stick, the conductor/classical music-themed poems of his which were posted in Medusa’s Kitchen in July of last year, and eventually grew into a book-length sequence which has just gone to press and will be out next month. It’s called The Point of the Stick after a guidebook on the art of conducting which was written by Sir Adrian Boult back in the day. Congratulations on the new book, Neil!

_________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 Neil Fulwood

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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