Names of Birds

When I finally got on the tube....

It took me forty minutes to get down the stairs, all 175, there was a line of people spiraling under. We’re to go home, I could see them all down The Strand, yellow jackets and black helmets, directing us to the station. I definitely got the message. A lot of angry people and it’s way too silent on the hour. But two stops in this guy spits right on the other guy’s face, right in the middle of the carriage. Both of them wearing well fitted suits and suddenly he has one of his Brogues on the other’s skull.

All of us watching his foot go up and down, again and again; Jesus, the stuff that came out of that crack.

_________

It’s the lack of information, that’s the worst part.

They’ll make you stand there for forty minutes, and not a single word of information. Lots of us there, like, a load of us there, but do they say anything? No, of course not.

They just expect you to wait. The…that board with all the times on it. I had to keep walking all the way down the platform to check it, and it’s just…it’s just rows of ‘wait for information’.

And that’s fine, I don’t mind…I mean you can understand it…but you hear the banging, real loud, you can hear it on the platform and you hear it getting closer…and they stopped letting people in…I mean you couldn’t see the floor for people but… to not let people in…I do understand it, I do…but when you can hear it, so close…and the look in people’s eyes…white and round and open.

There were kids there, and everyone forgets...

It’s a dirty joke, the cheek of it to steal our hours.