Friday, March 20, 2020

Draft: my great Australian poem: 'how I did long to hear "section ten"'


https://youtu.be/4TYv2PhG89A

Methinks a time before a grumpy and empty stomached Magistrate,
How grumpily she did remonstrate me.
Yet still after her stern lecture I did hear those blessed words issue forth: 'SECTION TEN!' she did fairly blast!
Cascading beneficently from her cheeks: 'section ten!' I hear it again in my memory.
With a happy swivel of my knee and ankle did I betake my exit, sojourning full well in the knowledge that her Honor's cry of 'section ten!' would see my stiff parking fine annulled.

Yea though the desert flower do only bloom once a century in certain breeds, and though I only heard the cry of 'section ten!' the one time,
Still methinks a time when I did yearn to hear it.
Cracking my neck and popping my knuckles I become the metaphorical quill dipped in ink. What know I of the Law? That is a matter for judges and lawyers, solicitors and advocates. They spend decades revelling in their concerns. I am a simple bus driver, a misunderstood breed. Our existence is to pass from one grey area of the traffic Law to the next, often into the black part of the Law, like elephants bundling their benches and riders through the jungle floor splashed with shadows and shafts of sunlight.
What do courtroom advocates know of the constant daily visititudes of little vehicles springing in front of you with no indication, causing you to make people tip over if you weren't already expecting that? Where  is the wildly reckless motorcyclist and speeding wide berth truck ready to sheer your side mirror at eighty kilometers an hour?
Mayhap some poor wretch from Cardiff sat in chains for a year, drifting across the oceans, starving from scurvy while rats nibbled his toes to the bone.
'Transportation!' the Magistrate did cry, crestfallen did his dry throat parch itself into a knot as he collapsed under the Sentence.
Such a terrible punishment, what care I for a four hundred dollar fine for running a red light? Does not New South Wales need more tunnels dug? Aren't her coffers full enough?
Heave you forward you sluggish beast! Did I fairly cry to the old bus' engine as the traffic light contemplated yellow. Barely a solitary meow did issue forth from the creaking engine while an eternity passed in the space of four seconds. Whole universes had been twinkled up in God's eye in less time. Still I could not beat the light!
Aren't I well aware of the empty stories of welfare mooches? Their  tired excuses for not paying their bus ride fairly  rendering themselves tired to my ears? Did I not wish to scold them: 'get a job!'? Are we not like Magistrates we bus drivers, well practiced to the cunning deceptions of the practiced fare evaders? But who stands for us? Only those who cannot sit beside us bewailing their life stories blow by painfully narcissistic  blow on their cell phones uncaringly loudly: forever. What Judge had to tolerate that indignity?
How I did long to hear, 'section ten.'


Just getting warmed up bitches
https://youtu.be/xYHJRhRym1U
To be continued

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