Ducati built a 999
Racing motorcycle dubbed ‘Moto
Poeta’ by its Milanese mechanics
Because ‘Baudelaire of Broadway’
Fred Seidel the ‘decadent reclusive’
Poem writer and rider
Ordered and designed the beast
Purely to his spec.
Though it then caught fire
Once he set astride
His tastefully fastidious
Fast high life
Maybe a mislaid book
Of matches then ‘went off’
Since persons self-combusting
‘Went out’
With Charles (what the?)
Dickens
Chet Baker chose the cream
Alpha Romeo with Roman plates
Chilled as vanilla gelato
He’d leave it who knows where
The art of instant composition
Took his air-conditioned horn and all
Hannibal fed his elephants ideas
‘Take the trunk road through The Alps’
Brrr! – he never did arrive in Rome
But sent ahead
Great orders of gelato
He’d only just invented or ‘whipped up’
So much for others’
Vehicles’ unwonted side-effects
Allow me Shanks’s Pony any day
Bernard Saint
Pic: Claire Palmer
.