PMD
Pressure mounts,
despairing pedestrians make
demands.
Paper mages decide:
plebeians must deny
personal mobility
dividing
pavements.
Mangled desiderata
perpetuate
manifold detonations.
Personal
motility devices
precipitate misguided doctrines.
People may die
pursuing Molotov dreams.
Please make do.
About this poem: A spate of accidents and flagrant flouting of rules by personal mobility device (PMD) users resulted in increasingly strict measures implemented by the government. On November 5th, a law was abruptly passed to ban PMDs on footpaths. This poem offers various takes on what PMD could stand for, reflecting the many ways in which an issue could be discussed or even resolved without resorting to an absolute ban.