Bypass

I used to think
before I saw your spelling
you were called bypass
because you had two lanes.
Had not an inkling, you were so-called for avoiding
the diseased capillaries of Liverpool's northern heart.

Don't blame you.

Formby bypass
aka A565
I'm a fan of nostalgia. I love 1990. Like to dive
into the Municipal Memory Pool. But there's not
much to relive with you; few flatlined memories to revive.

At your crossroads, your traffic lights,
a Ford Orion full of on-leave squaddies
didn't give way on me, and we made a
crumpled metallic "T" for everyone to gaup at.

My teenage dreams of freedom were winched from
your tarmac. Something inside was pinched, disappeared

and it was about six years later, I used you to
discover fifth gear; but most people had by then;
even the sickening crunch of the change seemed unimpressed.
But I'd spent a year in a dressing gown looking like
a med-student's dangling plastic skeleton
and couldn't care less.

It seems right I write this now
as my parents have bought a renovation project,
a cottage in a conservation area near West Kirby

as I will never need you again
really

Though
you can barely carry a full poem,
you carried me to places I wanted to go,
away from that infernal place. I'll give you that.
But what are you from this side of the North West
but a road I don't care to go down again.

Take the most intense feeling of indifference you ever had

and times it by ten.