Poem: The Slow Train

1.

There’s a slow train away from the city that carries peacocks and pigs.

Every night, from 5pm, it trundles with a glow of inward satisfaction.

The pigs fight the peacocks for seats and acclaim, awarding themselves

With buckets of champagne, that spill over onto the hard plastic floor.

(Granted, they are all as bad as each other)But still they pretend to be

The bees-knees of the world, and supposedly in control of the city’s

Destiny.

 

2.

There once was a slow train that carried serfs and peasants towards

Doom and gloom and other such unapparent mischief.  Plastic lights

And heavy doors keep them cooped up like chickens ready for the cull.

To be processed into cuts of meat and sold by Tesco on the cheap.

Without thought, they buy these cuts and eat themselves into a corner

Of their room from where they cannot move without a motorised scooter.

 

3.

Now the train is a cattle-cart; once a vision of luxury advertised by a pervert.

Now the train is a perverted trolley that caters only for bandy legged peacocks

who sigh whenever the drinks trolley ventures into their goggles.  And then they

stare, google-eyed, like wolves sizing up their prey, before they leap into

the unknown and declare war on anyone that happens to pass them by.

Like birds, and bushes, and trees and seagulls. (Why is it that seagulls are no longer by the sea?)

 

4.

The driver does not stop for any peacock to pride himself.

He stops for the serfs to get off and make his train smell of roses again.

(Not that they smell of anything but damp and plastic.)

And if only those peacocks, with their strutting feathers and beaky noses

Pointing into the air, could see the damage that is done by their hands

Perhaps the world might be a better place for us peasants to be involved with.

Perhaps the smell of the train will come back to haunt them all.

Perhaps the sense of occasion will be nothing more than a drop of bird shit.

Perhaps it will all end with good humour and beer, a charm bracelet and canapes.

 

5.

For the end is near say the serfs and the peacocks, at least we agree.

When the train stops we reach the end of the line and there is no

Crossing of swords any longer. No more crossing of tracks; no more crossing

The line. Just infinite red light that meanders into blackness and causes

Everyone to itch their eyes in unison. For low is the bridge of deceit, and high

Is the knowledge of drug-fuelled stardom, that links those of us who do

Peacock and parade with the astral plain. Deluged from inches of rain.