Nightwalk (Moped Emptiness*)
The Honda C90 is not an iconic machine
at the best of times.
And when the engine splutters out
at midnight,
it’s not the best of times.
For reasons of personal safety,
this has to be a pavement trip,
to wheel it back to Manchester
before dawn.
Skirting Altrincham,
it’s 1985,
streetlights are low priority.
Past Manchester Airport,
where automorphic grounded planes
give Disneyesque smiles of encouragement.
In Wythenshawe,
telepathic youths flicker in the shadows,
assessing the scrap value of man and machine.
“Smiths fan, leave him, he’s not worth it…”
they mutter.
I pass a sign welcoming me to Gatley,
my 12th suburb,
this could have been
the world’s most downbeat calendar.
Now I’m home, and it’s 6 a.m.
An hour later, set off for work,
relieved, for once,
that there’s no water cooler,
and very few moments.
*from “Motorcycle Emptiness”- Manic Street Preachers
Chris Hemingway is a poetry and prose writer from Cheltenham. He has a pamphlet “Party in the Diaryhouse” to be published by Picaroon in April 2018, and has previously self-published two collections (“Cigarettes and Daffodils” and “The Future”) through lulu.com. He has read at Cheltenham Poetry and Literature Festivals, and co-runs the Squiffy Gnu Poetry Prompt blog and Facebook Group.
atriumpoetry.com 