Silence of the student

A whistle and the carriage dims
bleeding power to the drive.
I’m inside buttoned to the neck
checking messages like the rest,
without glasses on predictive text
wondering what I might say next.

The city's concrete stalagmites
erode away to shadow shows,
bedrooms flicked on page curl corners
above the derelict spray can walls,
Gazza loves Shaz and Shaza wos ere,
primitive scrawl won station of the year
in 1974.

I watch each window and hope to glimpse
bare flesh or at least something less
mundane than a lampshade on a dresser,
a dance of veils behind thin curtains.

Changing tracks
bumps my head on the glass
and rolls a piss filled bottle
across the crisp packet floor,
it touches a shoe-less swollen foot
with ankle bracelet and painted toes.

I pretend to watch the dark in disgust,
setting up my angle of incidence
to an interesting reflection,
she catches me
looking out into the mirror.

I push hard on the seat in front
a student and his baggage, fast asleep
annoyed by the tiss tiss tiss
that his skull candy leaks.

I take the Swiss army knife
from my laptop bag,
hurting a nail pulling unused scissors,
small enough for a twin core cut,
he doesn't miss the beat
or even wake up.