Dimmer Switch

 

Dimmer Switch

 

You’re driving at night, ignorant,

on some single track with pretensions

to be a trunk road – which, I don’t know –

 

maybe that winding one

skirting Loch Lomond; slippery when wet,

your switchback at Inverbeg,

those ancient potholes of Ardlui

or hidden double dips at Luss -

when, without announcement or fuss,

there’s incoming at full beam on.

 

But you’re pondering, mind wandering

about ancient cultures and heritage sites,

thinking, well, you know,

they weren’t actually that bright,

were they? No wonder they didn’t survive,

neither side;

no one gets out of here alive.

 

Maybe it’s excessive pride

that eventually did for them.

 

Like Michelle once cried:

When they go low, we go high

which is complete bollocks, really,

after all, you tried,

but it trips glibly off the tongue,

when you’re young.

 

Here’s another one.

Football, a matter of life and death,

he assures you.

Defend until your last breath,

then, take a celestial escalator, ascend

like David Niven, remember him?

 

Oh, football’s serious, a battlefield

not a park when those fans are screaming

doctrines like we want revolution,

so here's some for free

have a bit of ideology

knocked into you, boy,

and fisting each other if they get

a wrong line or chant out of step -

mate, they should’ve known better

at their ancient age.

 

Game? Forget it:

You couldn’t see nothing,

in amongst the throttling,

left them at half time to get on with it,

maim each other,

cripple themselves, brother on brother

waving flags, sticking their own eyes out,

until the last gasp of the last shout,

and the ref blew up.

 

But still, all this is really nothing,

a diversion before that onrushing

truck I mentioned

still oncoming and foxes you with headlamps,

one hand a wheelclamp,

the other holds the cards; a strategic bluff

or straight flush

your single track, not wide enough

for passing places or off ramps -

will you extend a middle finger, let it come

or dim your lights from full beam on?