Passengers 21-25
Here's more (belatedly) from my Passengers poetry project. As you'll see this was before the Credit Crunch, just before, but everything wasn't quite ideal on the commuter run. There had just been dramatic floods, in that rather wet summer, and the whole mood was a bit subdued. Pre-recession tension, perhaps.
Passenger 21
Staring ahead
Closing eyes sleepily
Leaning back against the filthy seat
Hands crossed at the crotch;
Blue suit
White shirt
Tie decorated with white mice
Sleeping
On cartoon cheese
(full of holes)
Triangular
And nibbled.
Passenger 22
Head held in hand;
Man in brown suit
Idly presses mobile buttons.
Passenger 23
LOVE tattooed on the knuckles
Of his ruddy right hand;
Illegible characters tattooed
On his left.
HATE?
He studies the newspaper;
Makes notes on the racing pages
With a mini blue pen.
Close-cropped white hair,
Weathered, craggy skin.
Filthy trainers, blue denim jeans;
Deep-blue Dunlop top.
He departs at Winnersh Triangle.
Passengers 24 and 25
Red Tie; a blossoming of pink butterflies;
Smart Black Suit
Legs crossed,
Shining black shoes,
Raised blonde-dark hair.
Red face (sunburn).
He talks to a colleague
In a deep gray suit,
Psychedelic tie,
Peering at the Times,
Reading about submerged Tewkesbury.
They talk:
About the flood, the roof not even leaking,
30,000 gallons of rain per second
And drought
And how financial services is doing well
But retail and IT are slow.