Cross country, last train home.
I want, specifically,
the grit of dirty Lino clinging to my soles, want
polyester pricking my thighs,
the too-short khaki mini-skirt,
illicit thrill of riding home
half-cut
and slumming in the luggage car.
I want a cigarette, want,
specifically,
these wind-tunnel sheds,
the tired pull of bags, the whine that drags
electric stock along electric rails, and god,
I’m dying for a smoke, for the smog-sour taste
of clinker rubbed against my tongue,
dying for the romance of a train.

Give me back cheap day returns, no
ticket barriers, give me the fabric belt,
cock-swell in cargo pants, cold
mouth on hot skin, give me
adolescent urgency in
the flicker of the boards
and that gambler’s heady rush,
with every train that leaves.
All change, all change.

Give me that time
I fucked you on the Eurostar
give me the lap-straddle
of the six-seat, four-seat sprawl
when you had the carriage
to yourself, give me feet on seats,
red tickets,
t-shirts hitched, face buried in my neck.
Spare me button-pressing respectability,
reserved seats and travel apps, give me
doors you had to lean out of,
carriages you could step between.
Let me walk
down to the cold platform end, sit
down on my suitcase, kick
my heels apart and light a cigarette,
let me count yellow seconds
unfolding on battered clocks.

Give me rail the way it used to be:
dirty, cheap, and late,
give me cracked red leather,
orange wood, give me
first class booths with a slam-click of door,
cheap sleepers, give me rail
I’m too young to remember being real.
I need my mouth on something, need
to run my fingers in
the private places of old rubber seals,
need the cold of waiting rooms,
need mournful whistle-howl,
need to feel your ribs, your lips, your tears
on every platform greeting and goodbye,
the colour of the Forth Rail Bridge,
need sweet-sharp oil of coal, need
track-rattle, steam-soft, need
pant-pant-pant, pant that’s building,
building
to a scream.

Nothing. Just high glass-girder roofing,
tired light, battered pigeons,
cast iron made all seedy
with concrete, footfall.
Just hot rubber smell of idling trains,
Just the metal, oil, and god,
me dying for a fag. Me,
born years after England’s last steam train,
born after Beeching’s rampage,
born long after black and white,
and Milford’s little tragedy.
Born just in time to see
the last faint gasps of National Rail.
Me, I grew up to this: e-ticket-
charging-point-and-air-conditioning, but still,
still, I can remember how it was to sway,
one hand clamped around the ceiling strap,
one hand round a book of dirty verse,
all legs and hips and arse
pressed, pressed intimate against commuter crowd
and everybody sweating drunk.

So let me have it back,
let me wing it home, unplanned and all late night,
let me crack the window,
let me have one goddamn cigarette.

The station, it stays stubbornly smoke free,
I’ve never been a smoker anyway.
It’s getting late. I’m cold, and I’m alone.
Now take me home.