Harsh The Motorcyclist’s Colours Poem by C Richard Miles

Harsh white the motorcyclist’s headlights
Shouted with impatience at the world of cars:
Inferior beings, cloistered, sheltered, guarded
Who have no rights to claim the tarry track
For two wheels good’s the mantra, oft repeated
That spurns the sloth-like shysters in their wrecks.

Harsh black the motorcyclist’s leathers
Strutted with aloofness at the weaker plebs:
Underlings, encased in metal’s prison shell
Who sail along in subtler, sadder costume
And simper, tweedy minions to the biker’s thrall
That rules the road with skilled superior speed.

Harsh red the motor vehicle’s taillights
Screaming for the following flock to halt:
Sheep-like conformists, not to be acknowledged
By brash brigade of bikers’ headstrong horde
Who burn the roadway, sear the street with speed
That mocks the motorists who stall and stop.

Harsh white the motorcyclist’s features
Shaken by the fast approaching clash of heads:
Opponents now in fierce, prize-fighters’ struggle
And who’s the weaker now, now speed is cut?
Who wins the battle, claims the carriageway,
The lord of haste or weaker serf of steel?

Harsh red the motorcyclist’s bloodstains
Spattered with abandon on the tarmac floor:
Dethroned monarch lies there, broken, bleeding,
Lifeforce ebbing fast, all shining smugness spent,
Remorseful now that arrogance is thwarted,
The hunter hunted with his breakneck bomb.

Harsh blue the ambulance’s call-light
Strobing through tensed twilight of life’s evening shade:
Struggling victim cased inside a haven
Speeding to a destination, yet unknown.
Unheedful of the furious frenzy round him
That strives to help the speedster to survive.

Harsh black the motorcyclist’s future
Shattered into smithereens and shreds:
Hopeless highwayman now rendered roadkill
Stealing air in grasping, clutching breath,
Stunned silent now, as revving engine sputters
To a standstill, nerve transmissions cut.

Harsh white the operating theatre
Staging stark the skilful surgeon’s final act;
Dying casualty remaindered useless
Journeying in the final fatal voyage
To death’s service station shining in the sky
That ultimate foreclosure of speed’s strength.

Harsh black the funeral arrangements
Sobbing out their wretchedness and woe;
Shrouded cold cadaver now black covered
Not in leathers but in softer sheets
Cocooning chrysalis of soul and substance
Unmotorized, unmoving, now at rest.

Harsh grey the motorcyclist’s ashes
Scattered on the graveyard, fine as morning mist:
Snowflakes in the storm of life and motion,
Fleet as whispered promises of spring
Travelling now in unencumbered fashion
Voyaging through age and time and space.

Harsh white the motorcyclist’s gravestone
Stating loud a message understood:
Counsellor of caution and rare reason
Starkly remonstrating to the racing crowd,
A life-preserving, crucial, final action
Making meaning out of mindlessness.