UNDER GOD'S CAR

The invisible confines of your perceived freedom: The body you inhabit. The landmass that restricts your movement unless you have the money and authorisation required for foreign travel. The languages you speak and your inability to speak. Your need for air and nourishment. Your fear of opprobrium. The ideas that come out of the telly, the awful fuckin telly. The ideas that come out of the mouths of your friends. What your parents told you. What your parents failed to tell you. What your teachers taught you. What your teachers failed to teach you. The money you save. The bills you pay. Your responsibilities and your irresponsibility. Those new shoes you have your eye on. The people you have your eye on. The people who have their eye on you, or keep an eye out for you, or the people who might scratch your eyes out. Your eyes. Books and magazines and papers and the words in those books and magazines and papers. Street signage. Streets. Road signs. Roads. Gardens. Buildings. Rooms. Houses. Cars. Car alarms and house alarms. People who are easily alarmed. The alarm on your clock and the clock itself. Especially the clock - the big hand, the little hand, all the numbers they point to and what they mean. The places you should be. The way you get to those places. The time it takes you to get there. The guilt you feel when you don't go. The guilt you feel when you don't go anywhere. The shame of loitering. Your dirty secret life of taking it easy. Your need to contribute. Your unease at accepting contributions. Your tolerance of frequent acts of officially sanctioned theft. The benefits this theft brings you. The things that are stolen from you. The myth of the meritocracy. Your utter mediocrity. Your hypocrisy and your inability to see that you are a hypocrite. The threat of heavy fines or custodial sentences. Guns – even if you never see them, you know that they are there.

But the waft of ineffable liberation is occasionally detectable, in the quieter moments. Fully asleep or half awake. Day dreaming under a dead tree - gazing at stratocumuli drifting above a crooked creaking lattice – floating beyond the bars of a cage. Stuck here but it's not so bad. It's a bit of a laugh. The holidays are coming up. You might win some money. You might 'get lucky'. You could go to the movies. Maybe there's something on the telly, the awful fuckin telly. Did you see the thing that was on last week? It was mad. The Devil put a bomb under God's car.