The escalator of despair
Was waiting with her normal nonchalance stare
Her teeth constantly in motion
Offering the tip of a landscape below
A place of not knowing, not a place one is keen to go

I stepped on her teeth with huge trepidation
Leaving behind what was once was a friendly station

I rode the escalators down to this place
Reading posters, signs of things that
Were going to take place
Theatre, drama, the musical of my life
A pantomime made of my own strive

I followed the tunnels deeper they fell
Marking out pathways and other people’s  roads to hell

I found myself on a platform
Cold and Bleak
I looked around me in the hope
Of finding someone to whom I could speak

But I found no map of the line I was attending
Instead just a blankness and huge hole, darkness and fright
That looked unending
Looking for direction, for the interchanges that my destination
Was depending.

I could hear the sound of the train approaching
I could feel vibrations and and see rats encroaching
Encroaching on my light now lost, glimpses of my life beginning to rot

Don’t dance over the yellow line they said, stand back
For the train approaching is just ahead
Its lights dancing on the tunnels walls
Announcing its arrival, big not small

The noise is deafening, screeching and loud
The voice of my own despair now hidden in its vacuous cloud

A smashing sound as it brakes through
The blackness into light speeding through
Hugging the platform really tight
Reducing space so as passengers can alight

Doors part open and people descend
On to a platform that appears to have no end
This is not a place to stand still
The body of people is a perfume despair wants to distill

So move down the platform and keep shuffling along
Belongings of your heart held tight moving to the  rhythm of the throng

So I enter the carriage quickly and sit
Next to a man clutching his pit
The pit that comes to close to me
Smells rank and ****** and full of hypocrisy


Off into a place that is forever dark
Momentary fireworks the only sparks
That give you a glimpse of another line
A line perhaps to happiness or somewhere else sublime

Out of nowhere a train caresses, moves so close
and  brings aboard  a message

For other people are traveling too
To places that were not on their list of ‘to do’’
Riding parallel down darkened tunnels
Moving to their own rhythm, humming their own song
Rocked by a train, speeding hastily along
Turning a corner and now that train is gone

So we are not alone on the darkest rides that we take
We are not alone on the escalators that we think I taking us to meet our fate
For we all have a choice an opportunity to ride
Alone or with travelers by our side