last night, 4:54 am

We are bent back like blades of grass:
skulls cushioned by cold glass.
It filters the sunrise underwater green;
It bathes our bellies, bared out
to meet the tube’s concave.

We are particulate, in fluid time.
Six minutes til the next train home;
six hours til the next one away.
We will slink back to our desks,
bass still pounding in our heads,
in secret drenched:
with a weak spirit stench, black-lights
and acid sweat. Still insulated in it—
the blazer we covered up with to the rave.

We stand buckled in empty carriages,
nodding in and out of nightmares
while we rattle through the dark,
our knuckles bone white on handlebars.
We are cockroaches of this rail:
crawling deep in the guts of the city;
forever circling away the days.
We are the forever dazed—
forever drained,
forever drowning,
forever free?