Underground

Walthamstow Central,
   The doors slide open,
Blackhorse Road,
   Beckoning us on,
Tottenham Hale
   Entering warily,
And Seven Sisters,
   Surreptitiously spying.
Finsbury Park
   We clatter and sway,
And Highbury and Islington,
   Involuntary community,
King’s Cross St. Pancreas,
   Friends and strangers,
Euston and Warren Street,
   Close yet distant.
Then Oxford Circus,
   A blurring of boundaries,
Victoria and Pimlico,
   Of personal space,
Vauxhall and Brixton,
   A sigh of relief,
We’re spewn out together,
   At the end of the line.

Travelling on the Victoria Line today, I realised how well the station names scanned with train like rhythm.
(10.08.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Dan Roizer on Unsplash

Please mind the gap, tread carefully or
Risk falling through the grasping crack.
Beneath the step awaits unseen,
A doom which hides below the tracks.

You hear the scream of biting brakes,
But nothing is as it might seem.
That sound? A mighty creature’s roar,
As along the tracks it eagerly streams.

This beast that lurks unlit by light,
Over the eons has gone berserk.
And now its hand your ankle grasps,
To pull you down with just one jerk.

There’s not much time, so please act now,
Don’t hesitate, and you’ll be fine.
Don’t hang around, because you’ll find,
Upon your bones he’ll gnaw and grind!

I had a meeting in London today, and wrote this on the tube; the phrase ‘mind the gap’ demanded some form of comic verse. To be read out loud with expression!
(23.09.24)

Ode for the Day

An experiment in poetic doodling

Poem 653 – Victoria Line

Poem 301 – Mind the Gap