Metro Poems

Métro poems are a form concocted by Oulipo writer Jacques Jouet. You are to invent the lines in your head between stations, and only write them down when at the stop. Jouet did not edit his, but as I am not a card carrying Oulipo-utian so I have used the constraint as initiating device.*

 

Métro Poem:  M1 – Hotel de Ville > Franklin D. Roosevelt 

26/2/2024 2pm

Thumb taps and swipes  
Dirty glasses wiped
With dirty tissues 
Each one lost in their own issues 

Nails and rings and glittery things 
Earbuds, hearing aids, masks 
Natural curls – her father or lover?
Each one finding ways to forget the day 

---

Métro Poem: M1 – Saint Paul > Concorde

28/2/2024 12 pm

All the voices in all the heads
Tunnelling into minds moving through space,
Universes slide beneath fingers as we glide below the city surface 
Pains and plaits and toggles and zips 
A yawn, a cough, a hair tussle and she’s off 

---

Métro Poem: M4 – Barbès – Rochechouart  > Cité

28/2/2024 2pm

The pressure of too many minds, 
too many languages
blanking mine.
Syllables, all vowels, sliding one to the other 
—  an open mouth flow.

Even muted greens scream, when you concentrate on them, 
pink hair, red scarf, yellow binding.

The redheaded boy closes eyes. 
What world is he inhabiting 
and where will his feet  
— showing that he will grow tall — take him.
The mother has stylish boots and and inelegant fingers,
the boys are delicate and considered.

I used to be scared and maybe I still am, 
but it is hidden from me and I feel free.
Is an artificial freedom better than none at all?

“A world of intense faces and skinny jeans…”
I cheat and write as the doors close,
but cheating is sometimes necessary.

---

Métro Poem: M1 – Saint Paul > Champs-Elysées Clemenceau

28/2/2024 6pm

When lips move only the sibilances carry.
Inert.  Inertia. Bodies move beyond the stops. 
Haunted by all the lips — talking, sipping, pressed in non-smiles. 

A tall woman, 
head shaved to grey stubble,
eyebrows raising heavenward
as she feels the music.

A small gnat shows the way on the lighted map. 

A teenage boy says says “Trés belle”, 
with no irony, about the wall paper at Tuileries.

I am back to where I was.

[Change to M13 at Champs-Elysées Clemenceau but it is too crowded to continue except after Montparnasse – Bienvenue]

After the pretty girl leaves. 
His smile remains. 

---

Métro Poem: M6 Raspail > Place d’Italie

6/3/2024

If I’m not going to write about the people
What is there from within?
Tawdry.

Isn’t it better to look outwards from within?
What is to be learned?

Today I’m obsessed with hairlines
And I look outside and see a sign
“Coiffeur” [hairdresser]
…It’s a sign

To pass the time
To be present
To be present in the passing time

From the sunlit external 
To the dark internal
I’ve reached my destination. 

---

Métro Poem: M1 Saint Paul > Les Sablons

20/3/2024

Everyone is quickened, 
Has quickened. 
Loose in joints.
Jaunty. 

In 13 movements, 
the song of a tunnel
in a Paris Spring.

Do others feel insecure without their heavy coats?

This route is for the Kings and Queens
And their honoured guests —
De Gaulle, Roosevelt.

In the front carriage
the stations loom large.
We are driverless, headless.
Worm body only.

The Stations so close
you can almost see the next
as you leave the first.

Who is this woman
of indeterminate age
who scribbles in a notebook
at every station?
What is there to say?

Everyone is writing their own metro poems
in their heads.
Even if they don’t realise it.
Leapfrogging from thought to station, 
Station to thought.

I’m still here.
Here – still.
Though I am often confused
as to where that is.

This is not poetry
it’s filling time.
As another huge worm 
approaches us on the curve.

The old man is proud of the naval buttons 
On his old coat. 

Three stations til the end of the line
We’re doing our time. 

Now we fork and descend
Fork again and descend
Best not to think as 
We hurtle headlong 
To the end.

---

Métro Poem: M1 Saint Paul > Les Sablons

22/3/2024

Two young girls chat excitedly
tête á tête,
While a younger girl watches on.
Frowning.
Will this be me she thinks.

How presumptuous of me.
But this is what writing of others is—
presumptions, unabashed
on their behalf.

The spring chatter.
Now on the métro
conversations bubbling, overflowing,
replacing cool winter silence,

I can see all the way til the end
But not what is coming at us. 

How many hours
on this yellow line.
From here to there.
Where?

And today it is jawlines,
sharp and upturned
so they almost meet noses.

Narrow chins
and elegant eyebrows.

These stepping stones.
Paving stones of thought. 
Pavé means paving stone and certain loaf of bread.
Loaves of thought.

Signs.
The reading of signs.
A bible’s worth of signs.

I want to stop.
Is that boredom or fear of failure?
Are they same thing?

The rules are slipping.
Thoughts gripping 
at the wrong times.
Sly edits on the fly.

Two more to go.
Before the go-go.
Wake me up before —
Gertrude Stein Vs Wham.
Now there’s a showdown.

Good. 
Bad.
Or simply sad.
Rules are for Fools.

* A métro poem has as many lines as there are stops on the trip one makes; the would-be poet thinks up a line in between stops and then furiously scribbles while

Elkin, Lauren; Esposito, Scott. The End of Oulipo?: An Attempt to Exhaust a Movement John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition. p. 33