“I always wanted to be a Poet-Driver,” a poet told Celebrity Influencer Liqity Splix. “I always wanted to drift and do donuts on dirt.”

The poet guested on a Liqity Splix podcast to discuss a Major Television Network’s offer that he write and perform a poem for Exclusive World Broadcast. The network planned to use the event to regroove its mojo, no less capitalize its creative, equitable, and sustainable profile. The poet said he would write and perform a poem if the network built him a custom dirt track and provided an all-terrain vehicle. A contract followed. The Poet-Driver was made.

The network sought a suitable venue for the custom dirt track, marketing its Exclusive World Broadcast with the Poet-Driver to pivot its reality beyond its newly-capitalized Creative, Equitable, and Sustainable Profile. Media-savvy Mayors and City Councils across the land fell over each other pledging to convert legacy city landmarks to host Premium Content for Prime Time.

Our Grand Metropolis made the short list. The media-savvy Mayor and City Council on-boarded Stakeholders, Consumer-Creatives, and grassroots constituents who prefer non-capitalization to grow synergies of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and named a Blue Ribbon Panel of Experts. The panel zeroed in on the city’s Quimby Park, a legacy city landmark facing censure as an epitome of endemic exclusion (EEE). The targeted venue got little pushback from any but the Quimby Park community which opposed the plan with collectible, media-friendly handmade signs, designer mugs, and totes trumpeting “Hands Off Our Quim!” A consensus soon was achieved.

The media-savvy Mayor and City Council met with network executives behind closed doors and agreed in small print to a generous tax break in exchange for the venue and a piece of the promotional pie. As the corporate day drew to a close, the network had its venue and our city parents announced that they had brought the world to Our Grand Metropolis and put the city back on the map:

“Guided by our Stakeholders, Consumer-Creatives, and grassroots constituents who prefer non-capitalization, and working closely with our Media Partner, we will remediate and monetize an EEE to grow a wonderful new Rainbow Garden in a Spirit of Giving Back and bringing new faces to municipal picnic tables,” they beamed, pressing flesh in the spotlit embrace of their new Media Partner.

Our city parents crowned their triumph by naming the Poet-Driver Poet Laureate of Our Grand Metropolis, pledging furthermore to repurpose the proposed custom dirt track for use afterward as a campus for after-school activities.

“Our bottom-line here is a win-win-win-win,” they said with virtual tears in their eyes, four reels spinning a jackpot payline of cherries with each “win!”: “A win! for Stakeholders, Consumer-Creatives, and grassroots constituents of Our Grand Metropolis. A win! for our Media Partner. A win! for our Laureated Poet-Driver. And last—but not least—a win! for our Young People.”

All these wins, warm tears, and many, many hands put together, not to mention the empowered roar of earth-moving equipment, churned enough chatter and clatter to construct a modern municipal marvel. A New Quim rose from abandoned ballparks and bridle paths, its custom dirt track framed by a pair of curved, oblong ridges that rose to roughly forty feet high, verdured on outer surfaces which met low at one end.

The vision gilded the Laureated Poet-Driver’s leaves.

“This is a venue worthy of my powers as poet and driver, cunning linguist and lover of the woods,” he told The Media, male-gazing at Mother Earth’s Marvelous Green Mound as he polished text for his Exclusive World Broadcast.

Within the brief blink of an eye, bright sun and cloudless skies heralded The Big Day.

Towers dressed in patriotic bunting bristled with equipment recording the Pomp and Pageantry of a reviewing stand studded with Celebrities and Local Dignitaries. Concessionaires infield and out flogged a cornutopia of merch, including audio books of the Poet-Driver’s Donut Cookbook. Event-goers formed a continuous loop between pop stands and porta-pottys, fixated by the Exclusive World Broadcast taking shape on their hand-held screens.

The Laureated Poet-Driver center stage was an Olympian Transformed. With wraparound golden laurels and a network-furnished silver motorcycle bodysuit branded with event sponsor logos, he bore an opaque-visored helmet and manuscript.

“The dirt track purses like the lips of a woman’s sex,” the Laureated Poet-Driver mused to a young aspirant, waving an index finger like a bandsman’s baton in a pre-event interview, “if a woman’s sex be such a purse one may unclasp bareback on an ATV. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is, and sometimes one may: Yet only with the greatest care, for ofttimes it is weaponized.”

“What?”

“Tell me, young aspirant, how does one negotiate such a lusty proposition?” the Laureated Poet-Driver mused into the middle distance.

“What?”

“Well, how would YOU handle it, young aspirant?” he said, cocking an eyebrow at his lecturee.

“What?”

“Think about it! Do you pursue it for what it is purposed, or for what our pursed-lip culture purports that it is purposed? We’re not talkin’ sow’s ears, for darn tootin’! Far too often the mom-blamed things are branded as concept, packaged and dispatched clickety-clack through The Media down skate-wheel runnels, Takeaways so-called, to those whose jolly happy dancing Schneemannfrauen melted having Too Much Fun and never made it Back Again Someday! Quimfluencers hashtag social media with Me-and-Mine Selfies, ét-cét-ér-á!

“Mind you: None of this lies within my bailiwick as worker and driver, forger of words and maker of poetry.”

“What?”

The young aspirant despaired at the Laureated Poet-Driver’s uncultured pearls. So close could they feel the bottom-warmth of a tuffet in his creative writing program; so painfully close, yet alas no curds and whey! The program was small, highly selective, and nearly impossible to get into, yet so doing promised face time on a Brilliant Writing Future.

The Laureated Poet-Driver knew all that but dismissed the young aspirant with fluttering hand. He could not have cared less: Not about the young aspirant, who seemed a fine specimen regardless of grammatical person or gender, but indeed the entire notion of a writing program in the first place.

“A self-made poet lives by self-made rules!”

“What?”

“Fat! Begone, young aspirant! Inchlings pine within those bristles! Interview with a dean,” the Laureated Poet-Driver said. “I am the poet who drives dirt tracks. I am the working man who makes poetry. I am the driving man who drifts and does donuts. I am not the interviewing man.”

The Laureated Poet-Driver’s gaze swayed back lazily to daisied amazons and bosomed bantams in pinewoods. Behind him lay The Canon, arty tillerpersons and Human Canonballs audentioning in Union Jack jumpsuits and crash helmets, larkin in the grass pickin ashberries; before him the network-furnished ATV flashed bold in sunlight, bare-backed and brightly-painted, stickered with lines from his best-loved pomes de l’air.

The young aspirant pivoted to a Self-Important Person on the reviewing stand whom he singled out by this rosy-nosed figure’s Tudor bonnet with ear flaps: “I want a place in the Laureated Poet-Driver’s creative writing program but he said I need to interview with a Dean.”

The Self-Important Person condescended to that title and responsibility. They think eyes closed “There but for God’s grace,” opening them wide to say: “Should the Laureated Poet-Driver prefer Ourselves to interview one for his program, fine. But please let’s do this after the festivities.”

“What?”

“What, well yes: Precisely so! And bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!”

Aided meanwhile by swirling digital graphics of Poet-Driver Fotos, Figures and FAQs, Bob, a Black man in blond chaps and Cindy, a blonde woman in Black chaps, warmed up wind-chapped Premium Content viewers for the Exclusive World Broadcast with Blow-Dried Dish and Hyperbole inside a studio-conditioned observation pod. The Hands Off Our Quim! Collective and Love Us Or Leave US! Christian Soldiers faced off across police barricades outside the venue. A short clip showed groups in polit-cosplay hurling imprecations, shaking fists, and pelting one other and those in-between in law enforcement with red and blue marshmallows. Jiggling smartphones recorded this self-conscious mischief.

“Toast of the Town or Town Toast, Cindy?”

“L-O-L, Bob. Are you ready for Prime Time? The term ‘smartphone’ here is clearly aspirational but the Marvelous Restraint of Our Outstanding Men and Women in Blue is on marquee display for all.”

“Red and blue marshmallows aside, Cindy, this Prime Time wienie roast comes down to whether those folks get thrown under the buses they came in on despite whichever rooster egged them on scrambled or sunny-side up, how short those buses are or could be, and how many of their videos go viral.”

“How many of their videos go viral indeed, Bob!”

“And on those winged words we take you live to trackside.”

The event kicked off with festival greetings from the media-savvy Mayor and City Council, an appropriately accoutered interfaith invocation, salutations from the network CEO, and a deanishly self-deprecating “intro” to the Laureated Poet-Driver & Their Works by the Self-Important Person rosy-nosed in Tudor bonnet.

The Laureated Poet-Driver stepped forth, blinked bashful into the camera, told all my fans and the folks back home he done a new piece for the Exclusive World Broadcast, and rocked to the raucous raspberry razzmatazz of fan fandangos infield and out.

“Let us consider the climb-it,” he enunciated with purposeful precision, a nod to his network sponsor and wink to its sustainability campaign. Waiting for the applause to lull, nodding pleased with himself and showing gaps between his teeth, he gestured toward Mother Earth’s Marvelous Green Mound. More onsite raucous raspberry razzmatazz. Exclusive World Broadcast viewers saw him bow humbly to a decorous dappled applause from the reviewing stand.

“A working man does the work. My work is making poetry. A driving man does the driving. The working man works all day; the driving man drifts and does donuts. I done done all that, and do do make poetry. The do-do CEOs and politicians, college folk and celebrities drive at comes down to dissing other people’s work rather than making it themselves. It’s a privilege that comes with the paycheck. Others do their driving. Others catch their drift. Others grab their donuts. But that ain’t me, babe, no, no, no!”

Dappled applause mixes with whistles, hoots, and yet more raucous raspberry razzmatazz.

The Laureated Poet-Driver mounted the ATV. He gave a manuscript-to-visor parting salute to the reviewing stand and Premium Content viewers round the globe. Gunning the engine, he mouthed: “Man, machine, and dirt track are one!”

“What?” mouthed back the young aspirant, holding a microphone close enough to catch the Poet-Driver’s parting pearldrops for posterity, broadcast in delay lest the content distress Prime Time viewers.

“Man, machine, and dirt track are one!” the Laureated Poet-Driver remouthed, giving the young aspirant, event-goers, and Premium Content viewers round the globe an emoticonic thumbs-up. He nodded toward Mother Earth’s Marvelous Green Mound and lowered his opaque visor leaving several golden leaves sticking out. The helmeted head jerked back as the ATV leapt to action.

Man, machine, and dirt track: If anyone could have heard him, which was impossible over the machine’s high whine as the Poet-Driver negotiated the track performing his poem for the Exclusive World Broadcast, the following words could have found their ears:

“Man, machine, and dirt track are one; Unclasp the vulva divine, Pursehold of miracle, mystery, mastery; Metonymy, synecdoche, cis boom bah! Do a wicky-wicky gee and a wicky-wack haw! Fear of life and fear of death circle-jerked in four-stroke cycle: Die of you do and die of you don’t. Aim your hardware at beauty bold and bright, Nature great and green, since no gods care; And give me something 2 dance 2: No Pleasure Mound’s a match to this man’s mettle.”

And on and on in that order, with some variation, prerecorded and repeated as mantras channeled in a continuous crawl mixed with weather, news, sports, and quotations from major world indices as the Poet-Driver drifted and spun donut after donut to his heart’s delight.

The Poet-Driver smiled to himself that he sure had one over on the old coot who wanted to be a swinger of birches.

The rest is algorithm.

Peter Geier’s doctor is across the street from Poe’s grave. He has reported and written features for local, national, and international news publications. He reviews films for http://moompitchers.blogspot.com His latest published work includes a profile of a Baltimore neighbor in Ligeia, a speculative piece in Lumina about a plastic earring figurine that comes to life, and a yarn about a visit to a Turkish house of delight, anthologized in “G.I. Days: An Anthology of Military Life,” edited by Mary Senter. He is completing a collection of two dozen short stories set in New York.