I’m on the northern line,
the carriage is chocka,
we’re waiting in the tunnel,
packed in like a Rice Krispie cake.
There’s the sound of breathing
and people reading the same
sentence over and over and over
and over and over
and I’m thinking, this is tantric.
I sense the bodies in the carriage around me,
naked beneath our clothes,
and the feeling that we’re waiting for something
more important than our destination.
These are not just commuters,
they are my would-be siblings,
as we make our pilgrimage
towards the womb, the yolk,
but although we love each other,
we all understand that only one of us
can make it out of here alive.
I’m starting to sweat.
Then suddenly, just when
we’ve reached a point of collective zen,
the carriage shunts, lurches,
we sputter across the points
and, without warning,
we’re bursting alongside the platform
- posters zip past –
the station is either called oval or ovum,
and, it’s partly luck and partly instinct
as to which carriage stops nearest
the exit. The doors peel back,
and there’s no gap to mind
as we gush towards our goal,
tossing our papers to the floor,
kicking our tails,
millions of us, slithering,
mindless drones, half-human,
and I’m the first one through the exit,
weaving past the weak and the invalid
taking the left hand side of the escalator,
three steps at a time,
these long legs are my genetic advantage
upwards, ever upwards,
towards the light at the top
where I burst through the barrier
and onto the forecourt
screaming: I AM A GAMETE.
ONLY THE FITTEST SHALL SURVIVE
and only then, it clicks.
Touch your oyster in and out.
Touch your oyster in and out.
The erogenous congestion zone,
The clitoral millennium dome,
the head of Red Ken Livingstone.
London’s got a hard on –
the city is brimming with dicks.
The tube we ride’s fallopian,
a utopia of groping hands.
London’s undone, unzipped.
Touch your oyster in and out,
touch your oyster in and out
because the tap water here is oestrogen-rich
so we’re all on the pill, no
you’ve got no excuses,
if the gherkin’s a dildo,
that’s wet at the tip
and St. Pauls is a swollen
but solitary tit
then Touch Your Oyster
all the way from Cockfosters
to Pontoon Dock and back again
if you still don’t feel dirty,
remember… every textured seat
on any given bus or tube
has bumped ten thousand crotches.
So touch your oyster in and out.
Touch, your, oyster.
