By Rohan Scott
Ticket to Ride
It’s ten past nine.
The morning sun is still cloaked in her clouded gown.
Traipsing up the steps,
Shuffling past weary smokers,
I approach one the petites portes of the colonnade,
Before being swallowed up by Empire frontage.
Now under the canopy of rusting ribs, I am enveloped by a chorus of chatter
Incoherent announcements sound across the hall
My sullen eyes scan as my tired bones creak,
The languor of the morning has been rudely interrupted.
A scene of anxious voyagers unfolds before me:
People scuttle across the floor,
mothers shepherd their children,
tourists trundle their baggage.
The seemingly lost are then soon found,
Whilst the sloth-like are then suddenly forced to scramble.
Amidst this flurry, pressings of caffeine permeate the air,
Mixed in is the buttery waft of pastry.
I pause my senses to interpret the abacus of departures.
Taking directions towards the mooring of the steel serpent
I join the tide of passengers lumbering along this landed jetty
Studying the numbered portals, before reaching my station.
I mind the gap and then unshoulder my effects.
I then squeeze past my newfound neighbour,
And nestle into seat 643.
Rolling Anaesthesia
Upon the timetabled minute, the iron horse gracefully shunts out of her vaulted burrow.
She ambles through industrial edifices, trots by postcard scenes before building to a gallop.
Metropolitan facades begin to flicker until they dissolve out of sight.
Suburbia is swiftly replaced by the visual delights of rolling pasture.
My eyes sift through darting morsels:
Grazing livestock and hedgerows.
Winding becks and solitary oaks.
Church spires and cookie cutter clouds.
The motion picture of countryside, an optical lullaby that soothes the insatiable mind –
One last blink, then I am lulled asleep
Crossing the Thar
I peel my arm away from my vinyl bed
Glued by sweat,
The swelter keeps me in a permanent state of damp.
Triggered by an unwelcome touch,
I swat at a fly, palpating on my thigh.
The dry currents of air shunted through my window do little to stave off the heat.
The ever-growing lagoon on my back juxtaposes the barren desert landscape.
My companion drowsy from the scorch, dozes whilst saline beads roll off his brow.
The atmospheric fever holds me down, too weary to read a verse, too sapped to raise a pen.
Even my tepid water tastes of desert sand, it does little to satiate my discomfort.
The inhospitable palomino landscape is scattered with fatigued spinneys of desert shrub.
The wagon rattles through this hellish landscape, inviting those warm gusts.
My awe for this sand swept plain is fickle, soon the character of the intrepid and adventurous
quickly folds.
As I wallow in a pool of sweat, I yearn for modern comforts.
My loathing of this morbid environ grows,
My fantasies blend into hallucinations,
Until I join my companion,
In the realm of the unconscious.