Birmingham

 “National Britain in Bloom Winner” said the banner as I walked up

                            From the train station.

                   Surely they were

                                               Joking.

An Ode to Virgin Trains

It’s the

          Futuristic whirring sound of the mechanical loo that

                             Makes my heart tremble.

Tea!

          The temperature of a volcanic

                                      Geyser.

                             As I wobbled my way through the aisle

          bleeding its Tetley pus onto my

trembling, burning hands;

         

Ouch!

                   Couldn’t anyone

                                      Find a fucking way to

                   Serve tea at any less than 37,000 degrees Celsius and scalding your skin off if you happen to spill a drop on the bouncing, shaking, trembling train? Sorry I’m not trying to be a **** but it cost me about £3.50 for this cup of sculpted stryoplastic  into which a “shop” attendant has hurled an orphaned teabag into the stew of boiling water like it was a used condom and really you’d think that if you were going to run a national rail service then you’d consider the fact that

(cont. on p. 69)

A Poem in the Modern Style about Burnage Train Station

Burnage!

                             How your concrete

          Platforms             

make my soul ache.

                                 And my legs.

          A man waits;

                             What’s he doing?

                                      Who knows. He gets on the train and we’ll probably never know (because that’s what it’s like at train stations, unless you follow people, which probably isn’t a good idea, and has been legistlated against, in fact, so better not to do it, because actually I knew this guy who did that once, well I heard about it anyway, and I think he got a restraining order eventually because it was classed as stalking ev 

(cont. on p. 69)