commuters

Moments on the metro
still moving
still cruising
still choosing
still cosy with commuters
who don’t communicate,
why does commuter
look like communication
when no commuter
communicates?
Moments on the metro
still moving, still stopping
still breaking, still taking chances
still stealing glances
penning poems
nodding into naps
bags loaded into laps.
Moments on the metro still
madams with makeup
making faces
like painting Picasso’s
checking mirrors
to see if the eyes line up,
lines, lines of metros, moving
moving down the carriage
of non communicative commuters
cool, classy, kookie, crazy,
the man behind who smells
of starvation and stale streets,
buskers belting out bad notes
and getting bad looks
instead of crisp notes,
the red hat with the short skirt,
the tall ones, the tired, the tourists
plotting their positions on plans
too small to make sense of
too much to capture,
Moments still moving on metros
trailing tracks through tunnels
on the underground
under the ground
under the cars and the bikes
and the feet walking and taxis swerving
and cursing at bikes and pedestrians crossing
the wrong way, the wrong side
as rain falls and puddles
splashing into gutters
as water trickles down
from daylight into darkness
onto tunnels where it finds us
moving still, on metros.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

We slither and snake
in united unison
past the signals
and the stations
and the beggar
with his chanson,
trying to get
his chance on,
clambering to get
his way on,
chancing his way
on into pockets
of passengers
loosing patience.

We slither and snake
our manoeuvres
along the carriages
of commuters
preoccupied by i-tunes
on iPhones and
hand held computers
and fold away scouters
while a girl eyes a guy
in a muscle bound shirt
as another guy notices
the mini of her skirt
and dreams of dessert,
dreams of slithering,
sensual and slow,
along her carriage,
to drive his train
into her station
like he were Spartacus,
the Thracian,
now riding high
on the train’s vibration.

We slither and snake
through the darkness
on tracks laid and loyal
unlike our own tracks
seasoned to spoil,
we light upon
platforms packed
with people panicking
fretting about fitting,
fitting on, fitting in,
into trains and tracks
and skirts and holes,
cyber lives
make us whole.

We slither and snake
and stand closer,
strangers coming closer
to scents and smells
and stenches
that choke us,
breaths breathing
on the backs
of tensed up necks
of strangers
struggling,
slithering and snaking
on tracks that take us
back and forth
to and fro,
to work, to home,
to him, to her,
to passing parties
and improbable
possibilities.