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Poetry by Fiona Field

I had to travel just a short distance on a bus during the fuel panic buying episode, almost wholly engineered by David Cameron – excuse swearing on my part - that I’m sure everyone would have been well aware of, and I came up with this poem as a general comment on the situation.  Its called…

Panic at the Pumps

Everywhere the traffic’s tense

You can almost sense

Petrol’s gone up by a few more pence

And as fuel shortages begin in earnest

You can almost feel the tension on the roads

Like an animal intensity all along the curb

All the roads are clogged up for miles

Congestion is everywhere

As frowning, frustrated drivers

Peer out of their rear view mirrors

Trying to shield themselves from the glare

Slamming on brakes,

To avoid near-fatal mistakes,

As busses grind to a halt at frequent, intermittent intervals

And one driver waves his arms around in an apparent state of frenzy

He’s had enough of this, he’s decided,

Combined with the near heat-wave today, to put it mildly,

And tempers fray as the temperatures soar

Its an Urban nightmare -

Its metro-mania for sure

As weary, worn out faces are just trying to escape

To the countryside for a break

And if you’re a humble pedestrian amid this chaos, beware

For in a built up urban area like this one, nobody really cares

And everywhere, it seems, has gone besurk this weekend

With lines of furious honking horns

And pile ups that go on for miles 

While at the pumps the attendant wearily declares

‘We’re all dried up now, try somewhere else, Sir or Madam, PLEASE’

And now no-one can move more than an inch or two down the line

For the traffics simply chocca

BOTH sides of the road now

And they constantly try to reassure us, 

‘But the oil supplies will go on for ages yet!’

You know, the usual ‘FAFF’ -

But as with most things that they tell us, 

They’ll be lying, you can bet.

Fiona Field                           29^th March 2012

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