Sacred Wagons Of Men's Dreams

The sun is shining on the car lot. Silver grey rows with intermittent metallic prussian blues and smears of lurid reds glint in its low winter rays . The clouds scud above and are beautiful today. White puffed towers with dark grey undersides. Tiny planes pierce the blue above like suture lines. Distant people bound for faraway places - other worlds. The lot was occupied once by a red brick church hall that was used as a
community space and although people campaigned to save the place as there is no such thing as community any more it was bulldozed and with it some fine mature lime trees that shaded the street. The owners were supposed to land scape the area afterwards but the brick beds that border the place are weed choked and the odd low lying shrubs dotted here and there struggle to survive. When we first moved here the showrooms had been finished. Shiny temple to the cult of the car. However some or other of the objectors decided to carry on the fight. There were a couple of petrol bomb attacks on cars there, two or three would go up in a night. Sleep would be punctuated by an explosion and then flames would light up the dark. Bits of glass and metal would be hurled into the air each time a fuel tank went up as sparks and dense acrid smoke billowed across the road. Red flames reflected in a hundred obsidian black panes, window licking tongues in a ticker tape film flickering all around. Some disgruntled saboteur must have missed those yoga lessons and jumble sales really badly.
For about a year after that, whenever a drunken reveler (or gust of wind) wandered by late at night, a robotic voice would activate amid the crouching cars and crank out a stream of new speak in nasal tones striking fear and amusement into the hearts of all passers by. Over time the voice once commanding and aloof began to crack up. It seemed that the people who in their infinite wisdom and moral certitude had set up this hectoring device were elsewhere at three in the morning and had abandoned it to its bleak nightly vigil of the deserted lot. It began to stutter in cracked metallic tones. It would shudder into life like some old pissed bastard and start growling out obscenities at passersby until becoming a deranged squall, then finally an incoherent broadcast of white noise that seemed to get louder and louder month upon month. This voice would penetrate my sleep and induce bladerunneresque nightmares. I suppose people must have complained about that as it no longer happens, or the saboteurs returned with a hammer, who knows? Perhaps like Hal the errant computer in 2001 it was deactivated, dying slowly, mangled word by mangled word......or it just gave up the ghost whispering.... Thou shalt not creep at night onto the lot and set fire to the sacred wagon of men's dreams.......

My tattered plants stand at the window trying to catch some rays after the torpid winter days have taken their toll. They lean against the glass as if in desperation but all they catch there in the morning is microwaves. The roof of the hire shop across the road is festooned with silver masts of all manner and kind. A small metallic forest has sprouted up over the last year. and it beams out its bounty day and night into my home. Tin foil hats are de rigueur.