Boomer Biker Poem by John Beaton

Boomer Biker

There's a madman riding on a motorbike
and that madman is me.
You can ride on the pillion or my lap if you like,
free-wheeling, feeling free.

Brrrrroooooooommmmmmmmm...

We'll write a Magna Carta in the hand of winding roads
and lean until our knees cut trails of sparks,
accelerate like shrapnel running neck on neck with light
and litter tail-wind trees on our skid-marks.

We'll roar across the Rubicons, we'll jump the burning bridges,
we'll lose the hesitators and the damned
and swerve through mine-filled killing fields then blaze the jungle forests,
leave blackened trails exhaust-pipe-flame-napalmed.

We'll wheel-spin Himalayan ramparts, rocket off the summits,
and pass like shadows over high plateaux;
we'll avalanche down slopes and scorch crevassed and cracking ice-fields,
take all those choices Hobson never chose.

We'll break out on the borderlands of immortality
and cruise high plains where human lifespans end,
along the rimrock, buzzing by that switchback up to Heaven,
and the cinder-track with the bendy Hell-ward trend.

And then we'll see the flashing lights and hear the siren wailing;
we'll see God's cop-car sitting on our tail
then swinging out to overtake, to write us out a ticket—
we pissed Him off by passing Death's Dark Vale.

But I'll just yank the throttle back, and gun the motor harder,
leave that officious Tyrant high and dry—
we haven't got a lot to lose in bursting from His dragnet
for He's already sentenced us to die.

So we will carve the highway winds, escaping down the decades,
and thrive on mettle, speed, and outlaw thrill;
we'll never slow down, compromise, or willingly pull over—
we'll try to outrace God… over the hill.