Transport For London Poem by Gary Diamond

Public transport was at an all-time low
no-one was in doubt about that.

When I had come to London to study
trains were fast
on-time
no delays.

Then I had come to rely on them
and suddenly they decided
it was smart to start several years of
major engineering works.

They spent a year “renovating” Wembley Park.
They added a huge staircase.
If you were disabled
if you were in a chair
it meant an upheaval getting in
and a death ride on shining wheels getting out.
I wondered how many millions were sunk into that two-bit idea
this fifty foot high staircase of concrete
the pointless new tiling on the floor.

Delays occurred regularly.
Broken trains, broken signals.
If the amount of broken signal posts
was anything to go by that’s what
the idiots
should have “renovated”
first.

In fact
if I was the manager
of the whole operation
I would have “renovated”
the board of directors.

By firing them all.