BLACK LAMBORGHINI
Someone rich outside my bed-sit window –
there’s an Ascot forecourt,
showroom of them, shiny, black,
luminous workmen in orange bibs and braces,
baggy dungarees to disguise
their expanding guts,
doing the road maintenance,
digging six foot trenches,
laying electrical wiring.
He’s one of the lads, the driver –
a sub-contractor, the electricity board,
driving a Lamborghini to work every morning –
more electricity from the National Grid,
light and heating for us peasants –
he sits on a pneumatic drill all day,
bladder bursting, hammer and drill,
thinking of his French waitress girlfriend,
bending over in her nurses’ party outfit, silver
waitress service,
she never returns his text messages,
pictures of him naked in golden piss.
He works on site,
employing a couple of the lads –
a Lamborghini parked outside my bed-sit,
here on Grovsenor Road, the summit of
Eggars Hill, my paltry, urban existence,
Aldershot, Rigsby HQ.
I wonder about his tax and insurance,
the size of his wage –
the price of fuel rising, the price of his existence,
how far his petrol tank takes him, mileage –
six foot trenches to lay the dead into,
electrical wiring beneath the road, grit, tarmac, etc…
I’m confused, could it be
that one of the Russian workmen,
installing an electrical generator in the municipal
gardens, war memorial, red poppies for the war dead,
medals, laurel leaves for the victorious dead,
driving a Lamborghini to work every morning.
It’s parked outside my bed-sit window,
upward social immobility, I suppose, Theresa May,
the vicar’s daughter, going to hell –
a Lamborghini parked outside my bed-sit
window, shiny, beetle-black, waist height,
never likely to rust.
Simon Robson
2
Bindweed Magazine 