My London Commute, in Conversation with Poets (Haiku Edition)

Marks of weakness, marks of woe

Emily Dickinson

I tried to leap off –

But my – grim, rumpled – bag – stuck –

In the tube door – ow.

William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely

As a cloud of frenetic

Ash-faced corporate pigs.

John Keats

I swoon! O! – Thou ripe,

Gushing, blushing, pulsing phrase:

‘Elizabeth Line’!

E E Cummings

why do i do this

i hate this coffee and life

the clouds grin greenly

Philip Larkin

Old toad. I’m bored and

Sad. Time weeps on. I’ll jump out

Of that high window.

William Shakespeare

Lo – hark! -mark’st thou that?

A hag blights me with curses:

I was in the way.

T S Eliot

Dung, dirt, death – and why?

Didn’t wait for the green man.

Eyeless faces stare.

D H Lawrence

Lambent glows dance past

Goodge street: someone’s tampered

With the lights again.

W H Auden

This is the nightmare:

Crossing the Golders Green. Now

We must work, or die.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thou, unbridled tube!

Let me onboard, let me share

Thy fleet-footed haste!

Thomas Hardy

She strained in the dusk –

Listlessness shivered through me;

Blackfriars knew me then.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Her compaignye, on

The pilgrimage, was povre:

Swich a worthy shame.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

‘How much further please?’,

Baldric unsheathed; ‘to Clapham?’

‘Half a league onwards’.

Stevie Smith

That was low hanging

Fruit. So’s this: ‘See it, Say it,

Sorted’. Not sorry.

Gerald Manley Hopkins

This mumbling morning’s

Mincing-mad myrmidon mourns

This ungodly hour.

Christina Rossetti

I crumpled; stifled

A sob, but a veil’d dove cooed.

No wait – a pigeon.

Simon Armitage

Crammed in on the tube,

I’d rather be in Yorkshire –

Fuck! Dropped an airpod.

Charles Causley

Icy cold. Tiny

Billy Burg busks on London

Bridge. What ‘Welfare State’?

Aram Saroyan

Tube stops. Struggling to

Fill the haiku quota – just

Too minimalist.

William Barnes

Noo cowslips, noo sedge?

Now’t but tha’ drone o’ machines.

Noo! I’d reather die.

Bob Dylan

Heavin’ down roads a-ragin’

Times bleedin’ with pain: where’s my

Diamond in the rough?

Sylvia Plath

Stay, bright bluebottle.

Resten hier? Kein weg. Leaving

Soon, thank god. I’m through.

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