Negotiations
I make the first offer: raw carrot for cooked
(better the metallic resistance on teeth
than sweet pulp on the plate)
then cabbage: we barter over quantity of leaves
I take a moment to calculate
the exact reduction when cooked all morning
pudding: I promise to eat custard if I’m allowed
to miss Sunday School. Teatime is easier
except for the slight accumulations of flour
at the margins of a slice of bread but I
will talk my way out of salad cream
like a frog in slime, kicking for its life.
© Robin Houghton
Keynote Address to the International Transport & Traffic Innovation Conference 2019
Please forgive my diverting you from the business at hand,
but as we all know
very soon we’ll have driverless cars
governed by the all-encompassing Google Algorithm for Free Flow
(GAFF for short)
Our roundabouts and intersections
will be as frictionless
as a magician’s yanked tablecloth.
The autostrade will be fast lanes of joy,
cities will spin on their rear axles
road rage will be gone with the ghostly wind
of pollution past.
We’ll finally be free of all the tailgaters
the moronic last-second brakers
the texting lane-drifters
the yawning lorry drivers
unsure which side of the road is up or down.
(I have some central reservations about all this, of course.)
But until then it’s freight volumes
speed limits contraflows all the way, and so,
ladies and gentlemen, on your marks
your motorways your autobahnen, let’s go.
© Robin Houghton
For the school dance I wore a circular skirt
after Fleur Adcock
—not exactly Frida Kahlo ribbons and colours,
not exactly Grease or Happy Days or
Audrey Hepburn, no white gloves—
but it girl-swirled and turned me round
like a spinning top
like a Magic Roundabout
it started on the upline to London
from New Eltham, the 8.09 to be precise
and spun its line to Brighton via Rome
then to Banbury and Newcastle
and Nuremburg and Portland then back
to Brighton, which in the meantime
had grown a bypass
shown me its filthy heart
dumped me out of a marriage
killed off the usual protagonists.
A skirt that circled and danced the world.
I still have it in the wardrobe somewhere.
© Robin Houghton
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