Oz Hardwick
The Driver’s Nightmare
It’s the day the driver falls asleep
and seven die. You paint your face,
careful as glass, on the morning train,
and cash trickles slowly through the map’s
cracks, though the news reader assures you
it’ll be alright. But your house is burning
as your children sleep, and bitter letters
with no return address blister
your bloodstained fingers. You need the pills
more than ever but can’t make the cost.
You strike ice behind your eyes,
while each promise is a stone you have to
swallow, till your veins silt, and even
cartoons clench your gut with fear,
as European rubble lays
foundations for the wall that’s already there,
pens you outside yourself, and the driver
falls asleep, leaves the track,
ploughs through markets, wakes the dead,
and you’re afraid of the colour of your own skin.
You are not one of those who died,
but you’re sure you will be, the time bomb
hammering in your blood, as you up the volume
on the sharp suit with the razorwire grin
at the hospital gate, turning away
the burnt and twisted, counting the cash
that flutters like ashes, and you squint in the mirror,
a refugee in your own face,
and tonight the knock will sound on your door.
And as you loose the chain, the locks and bolts,
you fall asleep, leave the track,
empty pockets whistling some anthem
for which you can’t remember the words,
as you hit the wall you built yourself,
peer through the door’s burning crack,
appalled by your own human stink,
and brake too late, face-to-face
with your uncomprehending alien eyes.
Oz Hardwick is a York- (UK) based poet, photographer, music journalist, and occasional musician. He is co-author, with Amina Alyal, of the Saboteur-shortlisted Close as Second Skins (IDP, 2015). Oz is Professor of English at Leeds Trinity University, and has written extensively on misericords and animal iconography in the Middle Ages.