
Local poet, actor and spoken word performer Vin Adams will be appearing at A Word In Your Ear, a Labour Party fundraising event at 7.15pm on Thursday 27th September at the Hunter Gatherer café, Albert Road, Southsea. No ticket needed, just a small admission on the door. S&C are proud to present Vin’s hilarious new poem:
Rail (verb)
We are sorry to announce
That the train now arriving at platform 2
Is the wrong train.
No matter who you are, what you do,
Or where you think you’re going,
This is not the train for you.
We are sorry to announce
That you should not attempt to board the train at platform 2.
The button on the door may be flashing
(And it has made that jaunty, pinging noise),
But it doesn’t only do that when it’s ready to be opened,
It also does it when it’s firmly locked and malfunctioning.
We are sorry to announce
That we cannot fix the signalling problems on Platform 2.
They happen every time it rains heavily
But we are suspicious of old fashioned pseudo-scientific notions of cause and effect
And prefer to trust to luck.
Our luck seems to be better in good weather.
We are sorry to announce
That we have given three different reasons for the delayed train at platform 2.
We are committed to quality improvement
And while we can do nothing about train reliability
We can improve our excuses.
Please let us know which you like best.
We are sorry to announce
That we have no driver for the train on platform 2.
How it arrived there in the first place is beyond us.
We tried to get rid of the conductors
But they don’t understand the needs of commerce and went on strike,
So we relented and got rid of the drivers instead.
We are sorry to announce
That you cannot join the people already on the train at platform 2.
They boarded it in good faith
But will never alight.
When their bodies have decomposed
They will be refashioned into Christmas gifts for our shareholders.
We are sorry to announce
That late running services mean a dangerously large number of you are gathered on platform 2.
This can result in a Mexican wave of frustration
That threatens to push the people at the front over the edge.
But there is no need to panic:
There are no trains coming.
We are sorry to announce
That your taxes are still shoring up the service provided at platform 2
Even though we are privatised.
But you’re doing a good deed by participating in rail chaos theory:
Every time you’re late to work because of the trains,
A rich person claps his hands in Monaco.
We are sorry to announce
That there is no platform 2.
We’ve been soaking the tickets with psychoactive agents
To create the illusion of a dynamic and thriving platform.
In fact, we got rid of it when we cancelled all westbound trains for ever.
You can still travel east, but you can never return.
We are sorry to announce
That we are regularly sorry to announce things on platform 2,
But at least this message screen is relia.
This message scree.
This messag.
This mess.