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[pyreneeees.livejournal.com]

Hello friends! There was a poem posted very recently about rollerblading and cycling, and it made me think: do you know any poems about bicycles/cycling (apart from that one, obviously)? It's such a wonderful combination of mental peace and athleticism, so I would be surprised if there weren't any. Help me out? Thanks so much in advance.

And here's a poem, a little late month-wise but still great:

February
by Margaret Atwood

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

Comments

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

I am not a great cycler partly because where I live is super-hilly, but oddly enough one of my all-time favourite poems is about cycling around my hometown. Go figure.

Instructions for how to get ahead of yourself while the light still shines.

If you have a bike, get on it at night
and go to the top of the Brooklyn Hill.

When you reach the top
start smiling – this is Happy Valley Road.

Pedal at first, then let the road take you down
into the dark as black as underground
broken by circles of yellow lowered by the street lights.

As you come to each light
you will notice a figure
racing up behind.
Don't be scared
this is you creeping up on yourself.
As you pass under the light
you will sail past yourself into the night.

-- Jenny Bornholdt