Parisian Commute

The first train arrives with a sibilant shussh.

Swarm. Your reflection

And those of your platform opponents

Flicker as though caught inside a zoetrope.

Strange and distorted, funhouse mirrors.

Men’s trenchcoats transform them into sharply creased birds

Crammed into a commuter cage.

Screwed-in headphones gravely auscultating

Throbbing discothèque pulses, signs of life.

Faintly tangible warmth of seated strangers.

Dusty windows frame the outside world-

Blurred, gritty landscape paintings.

My heavy eyes catch and contain peculiar station names.

What origins has Ranelagh

What sad tales La Muette?

In the half-waking almost silence of morning

The air hangs soft and heavy

With thick swathes of commuter dreams.

Stairs up, stairs down, an innate panic,

Rough scuff tumble, rat race. Stop-

Train two: tourists. It is raucous

Borders fall, barriers shattered.

Packed, sealed, airtight.

Newspaper print-smudged hands scrabble

By the hundreds; unlikely pole-dancers.

People propped upright on people,

Sweat of the métro-boulot-dodo

Masked with pretentious cologne.

A woman croons ‘Besame Mucho’ into a microphone.

We have almost forgotten our purpose here

Lost the threads of the map on the wall.

All at once, a burst dam, the pressure released

We all flow out like minnows in a stream

Into our different worlds.