While looking for yesterday’s verse–the one I wanted to send to Car Talk, but did not–I came across another car-related poem (part of the same assignment, actually) which I had thoroughly forgotten about. It is a villanelle (most famously exemplified by Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”), and in this case, the best thing about the poem is its title. Which, as you will see, announces that it is a silly verse, and is a villanelle. After the jump:

For Sale: Does Not Go Gentle Into Second Gear

She kicks up clouds of country roadway dust
Her squeaks and rattles speak to travels past
And what was shiny now has turned to rust

Some twenty years ago we found out just
How she could roar; we thrilled to feel how fast
She kicks up clouds of country roadway dust

The chromed libido, symbol of the lust
Of adolescence; now the play’s recast
And what was shiny now has turned to rust

The engine used to pack a virile thrust
But now she stalls—with every backfire blast
She kicks up clouds of country roadway dust

A fate like this is undeserved, unjust,
For one whose reputation’s unsurpassed
And what was shiny now has turned to rust

The only movement now, a passing gust—
On cinderblocks, her windshield spider-glassed
She kicks up clouds of country roadway dust
And what was shiny now has turned to rust