Peak Times

Spoken word poem about trains and shit

1

Basingstoke

As I write this I am sitting on a train.

Connections have been delayed,

and I’ve been left in the middle of basingstoke

with little battery on my phone and no way of calling home.

There’s a sign next to me that says ‘Try not to travel in Peak Times.’

I can safely say

This is the peakest of times.

And I am travelling.

There’s a maternal looking woman, all bosom and greying hair, on the seat opposite, the only other person here. I want to lie my head on her lap and get her to stroke my hair.

It’s been a weird day.

We’d gone to the races for my dad’s 65th.

I won 30 on the first race then lost it all on ‘Loony Biff’. Loony Biff was a shit horse and the jockey was too tall, it would never have worked, but I thought maybe they’re in a buddy comedy and they have to win because they’ve been on this magical adventure together and here they are at Goodwood and things are finally gonna come good for old Loony Biff and Alan Bright.

So yeah, I lost all that money and now its near midnight.

The guard tells me I can still get in at 2am.

Considering I was meant to get in at 10 this is a blow but also I want to thank him and ask him if he wants to run away with me, we could catch a bus or a plane — definitely not a train — and go to spain where we could drink all day and party all night and then I would become his wife and we’d live forever in our chalet by the sea, just sun, sand, the train guard and me.

I say none of this but thank him and he goes. I sit and continue to write this prose.

The maternal woman has just got off. I miss her scent, I miss her smile. Perhaps in another life we may have been lovers. I just stare out the window into the nothingness of the train world at night, just a few flickering lights and my own reflection.

I look tired. I am tired. I’m more tired than I have let on and all it took was for this one minor slip in the trip and I’ve lost it.

I’m crying. I’m crying on national rail.

This is like a film.

A really shit one about a girl who cries on trains.

2

Reading

We sat side by side on the high wall

surveying all that went down below us.

I wore my short skirt because a lot of thigh always guarantees control.

The boys were talking about how the asian boys were watching weird porn in the dorms

and the general atmosphere was one of curiousity.

Tobin stroked my hair and had took my hand.

‘Up?’ I’d gestured, and we’d climbed.

He had a sausage roll in his coat that he’d been saving.

Everyone had to bring a mask and my mask was paper and thin

There were jewlled sweets in a bowl that the girls kept throwing

and the boys were laughing back at them.

I didn’t understand.

I just held Tobins hand

and we surveyed all that went down below us.

3

Oxford

In my interview

Oxford University

I used a haiku.

It was about trains

So there is nice irony

It was not that good.

4

Banbury

There’s a little sign next to me that says ‘please, do not place feet on the seats.’ It’s interesting how they’ve put a comma after please, like it’s meant to come across as less mean. If they’d just put please do not place feet on the seats then I’d be like, fuck you, I can do what I want, but because they’re all like

please,

do not place feet on the seats

then it sounds quite sweet and I find I don’t want to hurt the trains feelings.

I suddenly feel a sense of solidarity with the train. Maybe he was in love once too.

I realise that I’ve started to loose my mind like Tom Hanks in Castaway and I look to the bowler hat in my bag and wonder if he is the friend I will make, a pair of googly eyes and he’d come up great but then we’d probably fall out because I’ll make out with a trilby and he’d be like ‘baby, run away with me to spain’ and I’ll have to say I’ve already had this fantasy with the guard on the earlier train.

5

Leamington Spa

The last journey.

Clicking of train wheels along rusting steel scraped by scrub.

Thoughts cling on alongside the windows.

Playing catch up in the dark outside.

April has become a museum.

Things done and things undone.

I sink back into the middle.

Between these two constants.

Staying and Leaving.

Another to take my place as how it has been,

and another to take my own hand

simple as that, my monthly re-awakening.

Running over stilted conversations that never happen in real life

but that I can spend hours crafting just incase.

Preparation has been my saving grace.

If I have the words already in hand

then I can lift them to my mouth and speak.

As I pull into the station I have no words.

I have run out.

I walk along, calm within the silence that has fallen like fog.

Into arms that stumble and pull me back towards the noise and light.