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The Girls of Public Transport (A Trilogy)
I. The Girl on the Train
Ringlets of razors
Protect the impounded
Trains on my left
We sneak glances at each other
Constantly clashing
Our ill discreet gaze
The train moves
She snacks
On some food
Passing it
Hidden by her palm
Into her mouth
Over the ringlet on her lip
And licks her fingers
Those delicious thoughts!
Each clash
Shares a certain warmth
A passing of pheromones
And wishful thinking
What may have been?
She stops looking
Turning her head
To the passing landscape
- countless houses and back yards –
Lit by the mourning sun
Reaching an understanding
Of the futility
For the next stop
Is the end of the line
The end of our encounter
II. The Girl at the Brunswick St Tram Stop
She was not at all pretty
In any conventional sense
But oh! How those long red curls
Swished and whirled
As she performed her pirouette!
With a devious smile
And one hand in her back pocket
The other carelessly tossed through the air
She looked at me lustfully
Through the corner of one eye
As she turned – a well-proved mating ritual
She was not at all pretty
In any conventional sense
But in that moment
She may have been
The prettiest girl
In the world
The pigeons had other ideas
As they feasted
On somebody’s regurgitated dinner
From the previous night
Carefully dumped
On the side of the gutter
It may not have been a pretty sight
In any conventional sense
But they were so efficient
And so communal
And sharing
That I forgot about
The red-headed girl
And shifted my focus
Of beauty
Onto the bigger picture
On to life; the universe
III. The Girl on the Train (slight return)
Dark skies were building; it would rain
This time the razor ringlets
Were on my right side;
I was going to Lilydale
Not Belgrave
But the girl was equally beautiful
Though much too young
Still, her gaze was drawn
To mine
Sitting in identical seat positions
As the chance encounter
Of the previous day
She was beautiful, and longed
To be regarded as such
Like most young girls
Her mascara told me so
As did her well-maintained hair
And her belly-ring, exposed
By the high-cut, mid-riff t-shirt
On this cold autumn day
Her eyes beamed of insecurity
Overwhelmed by the expectations
And pressures
Of a modern globalised world
They shifted nervously
Has he really noticed me? ME?
But this was not a warm and fuzzy
Chance encounter
Of potential lovers
It was a stark realisation
Of a yearning for acceptance
And admiration
And lost youth
And pitiful loneliness
Lonely – as a recent conversation
Had reminded me
NO!
There exists no loneliness
In my world
Just defeat
And I will not
Be defeated!
Besides,
The lost youth got off
At the next station
And I travelled
To the end of the line
Alone
