Ode to the sly tail-chaser

O you, little ruler of the shortcut,
that you slide into the fast lane like it's your home,
and then you slip in at the last second where there is no space,
between a trunk and a hood,
between patience (of others) and small infamy (yours),
between two people who just want to get home or to work without meeting someone like you.

You who see a double continuous line
and you take it for an asphalt beautification.
You who look at the zebra stripes
as if they were decorations.
You who observe the channel strips
and you think, with the calm of the mediocre,
that are valid for others.

You have the rare talent of confusing the rule with an opinion,
the ban with a suggestion,
the road with your own video game
where cheating is the only form of intelligence you allow yourself.

There you are, still,
gaze fixed in front of you,
face of someone who is never ashamed,
expression of someone who has decided that the world is made to give in.
You're not smart.
You're just someone who's learned to live in the tiny space between other people's politeness and your own nerve.

Behind you the choir rises.
Horn honking, cursing held back,
hands to the sky,
mothers called into question with a creativity that deserves a literary prize.
And you nothing.
Because you know that almost no one will want to pay the price of the lesson.
Almost no one will want to sacrifice the bumper
to explain the difference between cunning and dignity.

This is your real secret:
live by the prudence of others.
You feed off their desire to avoid harm,
of their tiredness,
of their not wanting to transform a normal day
in an accident according to the report and body shop.

But every now and then you find someone worse than you.
Someone who understands everything in a second
and decides that not today, today we won't pass.
One who brings his nose up to the edge of the license plate of the car in front and plants it there,
how to plant a sign in the wrong ground.

Then the duel begins.
No longer a road, but a test of nerves.
No longer two cars, but two stubbornnesses that measure themselves in the most useless centimeter of civilization.
The first one to retreat loses.
The first to look away admits surrender.
The first person to blink confesses that all their confidence was just a parking lot act.

And the guardrail is getting closer.
The road narrows.
The air becomes thinner.
Iron waits with the patience of things that don't need to be right.
Then comes the braking,
then the tamponade,
then the little daily disaster
which turns your stroke of genius into an endless queue.

Five kilometers of queue.
A monument to the ego,
a tribute to your brilliant pettiness,
a road safety lesson written in sheet metal and profanity.

And you stay there, still,
to contemplate your masterpiece of nothing,
convinced once again that he is the best.
But the truth is simpler:
you just confirmed that your cunning is a form of miserliness with the indicators off.

Thanks, idiots.
For giving us yet another proof that traffic, every now and then,
it is the most faithful portrait of the species.

• Don't Touch Her – Violence Against Women
• Stay Human – Staying Human When the World Goes Crazy
• Ricky Guariento – Interview Metal.it / Symphonic Reverie