This is not a checkpoint

You'd come across farmers sons
You went to school with
On the back roads at dusk
Looking to park up somewhere quiet
With your first Convent lassie
A blur of camouflage
The circle of dim red light
And you'd draw up to some fella
Locked and loaded
You once dead-legged in the playground
You were both playing new roles
He had his licence to kill
You just had your licence
The idea was to be civil -
Men of the world
But your girl flinched violently
Giving the game away
And it made you suddenly ashamed
Knowing in the dirty wash of sidelights
It might have been a different story
If she'd been there on her own
Without the thin orange cover of your
'respectability'
There's an awkward moment
When you try to read his opinion
Hating yourself for doing it
And, for forms sake
He pretends to check your details
You're let through, of course
Still a friend of the state
Despite your exotic tastes
You give a weak salute
As you spot your old art teacher
Prone on the verge
Covering you with a
General purpose machine gun
Like the subject of his own Magritte
The surreal picture
Now framed in your back window
Is consumed by the pink folds of twilight
The legacy remains -
An unwelcome passenger
A big, sour lump of indigestible history
Sprawled across the back seat
You thought you'd be playing on later
She is silent, for a time, then:
'Sorry. This isn't going to work.'