Vehicles Devour Space¹

What Terror would enthrall the
Street could countenance disclose²
The job of the Driver is very Fatle –
Their Family should be very Anshios
Because the Driver could easily be Dead³
We Pave Paradise – put up a Parking Lot⁴
Overpasses, Freeways – are for the Blind
Staring with Glass Eyes, Speeding Unseeing⁵
Traffick is what they put for’ard – but it’s to do
Harm to the Land and the Poor in the Long Run⁶
We Started on our Feet and we have those still⁷
I’d rather be a Forest than a Street – I’d
Rather feel the Earth Beneath my Feet⁸
“Why do you Shoot on us?” – “For
Exceeding the Speed Limit … Any
Speed a Car travels is too great”⁹
Love is Bigger than a Cadillac¹⁰

¹ Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity
² Emily Dickinson, Its Hour with Itself
³ Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
⁴ Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
⁵ Ursula K. Le Guin, Cars Can’t See
⁶ George Eliot, Middlemarch
⁷ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
⁸ Paul Simon & Daniel Alomía Robles, El Condor Pasa
⁹ Hermann Hesse tr. Basil Creighton, Steppenwolf
¹⁰ Charles Hardin & Norman Petty, Not Fade Away