DRIVE-BY POETRY

I was a victim of drive-by poetry

assaulted with Rudyard Kipling

by two rude boys in a souped-up coupe

flashing past me up Broadway

speeding puddles

onto drainpipe trousers

later they shock an elderly couple

with shouted snatches of T.S Eliot

haring around a blind spot

then up George

blaring Blake from blacked-out windows

a police spokesman yesterday

played down the incidents

as nothing new

people have been terrified of poetry for years

he said

copyright Ash Dickinson