MAN-TRIKE (Per-destrians)

I was recently self diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

I guess I’ve had it all my life and never knew it, which is shocking to me, really—

After holding down a respectable and steady stream of 142 jobs in 25 years?  Who’d have guessed?

I’ve owned 18 different automobiles, moved 110 times, burned through 12 ex-wives, 2,673 hobbies, a baker’s dozen of

disgusting cats, a glowing ulcer—not counting the three heart attacks, and no one’s ever had a clue!

That just shows you how ignorant we can all be when we don’t know how to detect the signs!

So I bought a tricycle

No, not a PUNY little tricycle,

I’m not a PARKING LOT CLOWN,

A big herkin’ Camero-red, balloon-tired, fully equipped, MAN TRIKE!

It looks like a Clydesdale should be pulling it.

Man-Trike has three speeds: Stop, Go, and Stop, and weighs the same as a drunken cow stuffed full of bowling balls.

That’s the point.  It has to completely fuck with me, keep me busy, and train me to stay focused on the task at hand.

Which is not poetry, or blaxploitation, or judges, or scores, or the humorless.  The focus is on riding the Man-Trike.

It has a small wire basket, on the front that fits a half rack of Beck’s, and the big one on the back holds a 25 pound block

of ice, a case of gin pints, a boombox, and just about any road kill that comes my way.

Even with my massive hairy calves, the size and color of nitrous oxide tanks, Man-Trike barely reaches a mile an

hour…especially if I’ve gotten into the gin.  I can gulp three triple espressos, and still can’t pass a curb rat without

manifesting a hernia.

Man Trike has a 30-foot CB antenna with a biohazard flag on the top, and a homemade cardboard license plate that says

Dooley on it.  I know…I hate vanity plates too, but it’s important to me that people know about my racial heritage.  I don’t

want to be confused with an ADHD suffering tricycling Scotsman.  I’m as Irish as the day I was born.  The Scots may be

worthless, but they’ll never be as worthless as the Irish will.  And by the way, the Irish are through taking your shit.

Whoever you are.

Everywhere I go on Man-Trike

People look at me like I’m mentally, if not socially, retarded.

Plodding up the sidewalk

running stop lights at a methodical pace,

But instead of screaming at me and flipping me the bird as they screech avoid a collision with Man-Trike,

They grit their teeth and mumble under their breath

I carry an inflatable squishy dildo that honks like a horn if anyone gets too close.  Sqwonk!  And it wags like a sad dog.

I can beat this thing, forget poetry, forget blaxploitation, forget judges and scores and the humorless…

I have to stay focused on the tricycle ride at hand.