UBERTAXI

UBERTAXI

Relax, the future’s on its way,

Surely the future is now here

The future is just over there

One dark night on lurking street

I saw the future picking up a fare

Etched with four dark letters

UBER where TAXI ought to be

Future’s dark shape floats along

One white eye glowing on its roof

All that I once knew now seems wrong

Some TAXIs now say UBER

On that sign up on their roofs

That floating word spoke volumes

A bright sign of the changing times

Telling us how this world now consumes

This modern world confuses

I’m not sure I understand it

Do they track your phone by Radar?

Some geopositional jiggery-pokery

App somehow delivers you a car

I’m suspicious of this future

This future just worries me

Since so many TV script writers

Seeking out new ways of killing

For a while used facsimile UBERs

Is an UBER not a TAXI?

Is a TAXI not an UBER?

Can a car arriving with a driver

Only be one but not the other

Or be both, or perhaps neither?

I was disappointed by my first UBER

That UBER left me underwhelmed

In my mind what ought to have stopped

Was some kind of silver sci-fi pod

Not just a car with a lamp on top

Relax, the future’s on its way,

Surely my future’s is pulling up

The brave new world’s arrived

On the dark street outside

I’m wondering if I’ll survive?

Martin A W Holmes, October 2016