Jacob’s Ladder
the hubcaps —
those gleaming silver nomads of the tar, holy rollers deserting me like faithless friends hitching rides to wilder horizons. they vanish into the luminous night or the blistering noon, tumbling free while I loop the same grimy industrial estate, the same sharp corners, unravelling slow like a bad dream I can’t shake.
It’s a sacrament, their breakout, pure holy fire as I ease the rattling heap around a bend, brakes whispering soft as a lover’s goodbye, and bam, one’s gone: spinning wild on its axis, faster than the whole creaking beast, a dervish unchained from the axle’s grim oath, dodging the thundering semis that could smash it flat, scatter its shards like unspoken sins across the tar.
yesterday, in Trafford Park’s summer blaze, one bolted like a hellion set loose, shot down the road at 25mph, hopping the pavement like ascending some mad Jacob’s ladder, bouncing skyward in ecstatic repentance for all those miles of stagnation, chasing paradise in one frantic leap.
then winter hits, the true crucible, windows iced shut against the bite, heater belching rusty heat into your face like a worn-out kiss. you hear them muffled now—the skitter and groan as they skid on slick roads behind, ghostly followers in the gloom. eyes fogged, stinging from salt and blast-furnace air, you peer through the haze for that final sparkle, that roadside grave. and then you spot the carcass in the gutter, caked in sludge, diesel gore from trucks that never paused to grieve.
each lost hubcap’s a mini-death, a farewell, lightening the car—and me—peeling off slivers of soul like cheap chrome. I quit replacing them; what’s the use? the ride’s shedding bits same as I am, vital scraps detaching sudden, rolling off quicker than you can chase. you shrug, say it’s just plastic, a tacky disc, but no—it’s the façade that dresses the wheel, hides the raw bolts and grime, makes the machine seem whole, not fraying at every seam.
shiny bastard spins
off the rim, crushed by drunk trucks—
gutter grave, fuck it
