BOSTON (WBZ-AM) -- With heavy delays due to the Comm Ave Bridge replacement project, it's been a rough week for commuters. WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Carl Stevens has a poem for the masses stuck in traffic:
It’s Friday, it’s Friday, bang the drum! Play the flute!
Tomorrow we won’t have to make this commute.
Mile by mile, and inch by inch…
We’re crunched and bunched by the pavement grinch!
We feel enslaved in this land of the free,
In our four-wheeled prisons from point A to point B.
I know that they warned us. They said, “Stay away!”
But if we don’t go to work, we will not get paid.
So we creep up the on-ramp, and start the long wait.
We memorize each other’s license plate.
I watch a guy eating breakfast behind the wheel.
All that time makes you hungry. I know how he feels.
God help us all if a big truck stalls,
And give us large bladders when nature calls.
And bless us with patience when we’re caught by the sight
Of a long flat tundra of tail lights.
The bridge repairs were needed. That much is plain.
But why does infrastructure cause so much pain?
We’re helpless, like a cowboy without a horse,
At the intersection of a hangnail and an angry divorce.
We’re like a carton of milk in search of a fridge,
We’re giving four-letter names to the Comm Ave Bridge.
I’m a motionless beggar in search of a coin…
I should get a job in Alaska, or maybe Des Moines.
Some place where it does not hurt to drive,
Where you’re not surrounded by bees in a crowded hive,
Some place that doesn’t yell, “Stay away!”
Where it’s bumper to bumper on each summer day.
But before I start getting blue in the face,
I need to back away and give this some space.
We rat-race rats have just five days to run…
By the end of next week, the work will be done.
'Til then I’ll breathe slowly, in the nose, out the mouth.
I won’t let my Boston emotions head south.
When I finally get home, and sit beneath the stars,
I’ll pour a margarita and light up a cigar.
The commute won’t kill me, no matter how unforgiving…
This stop and go life of mine will keep on living.
Listen to WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Carl Stevens (@carlwbz) read his poem: