I have a bike, but I rarely ride it…
I can always find a reason not to…
Always something else to do beside it…
Lame contrivances that claim “I’ve got to…”
Weak-kneed excuses that can’t be weighed-up;
that validate avoidance; that hold back
progress. Mere substitutes; made up
distractions with amplified fold-back;
with magnified pitch too loud to ignore…
too easily attached to a should-do
set of options that add ‘neither/nor’
to a definitive list of could-do.
. We put good ideas in concrete casements,
. that’s why we keep bikes in locked-up basements.

© Tim Grace, 19 November 2011

To the reader: How many flat-tyred bikes are there languishing in basements? Mine is one of them. It was quite a nice mountain-bike when I bought it; a comfortable ride. With annual rapidity, the ageing bike gets a hopeful make-over. And with that yearly pilgrimage comes a wander through the local bike-shop. As the distance between purchase and repair widens the futility of my efforts becomes more pronounced. Not all is lost… I do own a very high-tech bicycle pump!

To the poet: This sonnet is more experimental than it is successful. The double-barrelled rhymes tug at the narrative; dragging it ever closer to puzzle over poem. It doesn’t hurt to occasionally contrive a rule in the name of literary exercise. The pull of pattern over purpose is a challenge worth accepting. With the end-game tightly managed there came the need for greater emphasis on the logical flow of the meta-text.

i have a bike