Motorcycles really are poetry in motion

When you have your motorcycle flowing over a series of sweeping bends on your favourite stretch of road, it’s like poetry in motion.

For young Melbourne poet, Michelle Noonan, motorcycles are simply poetry. She has been riding since she was two, saw Wayne Gardner race in the Phillip Island GP, is a Crusty Demons fan and dreams of one day owning a Harley. “But if I purchased one I don’t think I’d ever get home or get anything much done,” she says.

In the meantime, she rides a 2012 Kawasaki KX450F and satisfies her desires by penning poems about motorcycles, two of which are reprinted with kind permission below.

“When I was around two years old, I rode my first motorbike, which was a little blue Suzuki,” she says. “I went on to have many more, but the love of my life was when I turned 13 and was able to save enough money to go halves with my dad in my first Yamaha (a YZ80). I still have a video somewhere of me tearing the bike to pieces with my brother telling me not to. It was just an instinctive thing to do, to learn all about how to fix the bike in case it broke down.”

Please enjoy her poems and if motorcycling also moves you to poetry, please send them in to mark@webbikeworld.com.

Ride Thy Night Away

We’ll ride thy night away, so thy beautiful moonlight shall not go astray.
This beautiful night, I will not throw away
So we’ll ride until dawn comes into sight.

There is nothing better than feeling that bike underneath you,
And the heat coming from the motor, the sound that it makes,
Your man on the front or the back, the best way to get anywhere in this world, I would say.

The lean of the bike and the straight roads ahead,
Miles and miles of countryside, you cannot escape.

The beauty that Australia holds from this seat, the peaceful journey, the only way.

Almost asleep on the back of the bike, I tap you on the shoulder and tell you it’s my turn,
I’ve been patiently waiting, for you to take away your control,
So I can jump on the front and exhilarate my soul.

Cuddling me from behind, doing everything you tell me not to do as a pillion passenger,
I flick off your arm.
Cos’ you’re distracting me now, and I gently glide you off to sleep, before we hit the next town.

He Came out of Nowhere

He came out of nowhere, on his black motorbike,
And what I saw, I sure did like.
I had to look, I just didn’t care, Cos his species is very rare.
I love crazy men, cos I’m crazy myself,
I love to put my life in danger, I’ll go for a walk with any stranger,
He rode up to me, I thought I was dreaming,
I hoped that he couldn’t see, that my heart, it was beaming

He took me for a spin alright, we were out for most of the night,
I held him real tight, not because of the fright,
But because I needed him so, I didn’t ever want him to let go.
He took me riding the very next day,
Over the hills, way past the Bay,
He didn’t lay a finger on me, but we were in love, I could see.
I asked him where he lived that night, he blanked out like he had got a fright,
Told me he lived nowhere, he didn’t care,
Told me he was a wanderer, from many years back,
That his parents love was very slack.

His dad would beat him up all the time,
Couldn’t even spare his own kid a dime,
Cos he was a drunk and his son was a punk.