Air Tax In The Hydrogen Undergroung

Imagine everyone in this carriage is single,
the advert gleams as we rocket through
scratched paper arteries, old posters
selling CCTV smiles, powered by oysters.

We try the hydrogen Overground
learn to breath each other’s exhales
during months that we are closer
to people we don’t know, than the ones we do.

We pay for limbo, hope the quick outside
is still there when we step back into it.
The street churches become lungs,
break dancers undo their feet to choir music.

People will say things like South-West girls are hotter
than North-East girls. No-one looks like where they grow up.

I shout trebuchet?! at a taxi driver, he shrugs
and throws me out anyway. I expect
cockney shouting and football chants
knocked over in the road.

Grease hardens in chalk outlines of dead men.
They will walk in the parts of buildings
made by the sun sinking lower.
Women will listen for heavy breathing.

I cannot find grass that wasn’t put there
by a government official demanding Air Tax.
We will worry about the gangs
but beg to turn the lights out, to stay green.