END STATION

Parallel lines meet at infinity,
but in the case of these rails they stop
a long way short of that: at the buffers
and the traveller’s buffet, at
the men’s toilets with their
I LIKE MEN LIKE U and the women’s
with almost the reverse
of this graffito paradigm.

Isn’t this where the idea
of the soul comes in, the whole
being worth more than the sum of its parts?
Around these parts, this hole, the soul
is hard to find and the devil has crept
into every corner, scattering scraps of litter
that stain the tarmac like confetti
at a Town Hall wedding.

What do we do with places like these?
We live in them and maybe fall in love
in them, we hate in them and hate them
because they are going nowhere.
We bypass them and go up-line
to other towns that look the same:
identical shops, identical Braille of chewing gum
on the pavements, similar birth-, death-
and crime-rates, similar loves and similar hates.

Parallel lines meet at infinity,
but in the case of these rails they stop
a long way short of that: at the buffers
and the traveller’s buffet, at
the men’s toilets with THE TOWN
THAT NEVER HAPPEND
and the women’s with almost the reverse
of this graffito paradigm.