Day 2 of Street Line Critics on Tour in Helsinki at the Kulosaari metro underpass. Photographs Anastasia Artemeva and Lotte Bender.
Featured pieces:
On the metro in the rush hour
On the busiest line
Crammed clack clacking carriages
Passing sign after sign
Commuters lost in thought
Doors open, doors close
Getting on, getting off
Sharp tempers, sharp elbows
Margaret O Driscoll
Clancoolmore
Bandon
Co Cork
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‘It’s only a job’ – Elaine Reidy
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Kulosaari Metro Station
The dawn breaks over Kulosaari Metro station
catching the vibrant colours and casting its golden glow
waiting for the nation to arise and go,
to start the day and be on their way
to destinations far and wide
the early commuters sometimes bleary eyed
Now there’s nurse Mick
for the hospital he is bound
where he spends his day tending the sick of the town
Every morning he’s at Kulosaari Metro
Planning the day ahead
Thinking of the patients he’d lost
and grateful for those now ready
to leave their beds
Many a true love blossomed in Kulosaari Metro
in the heady days of youth
In the springtime of the year
when the sun seemed to shine forever
and the lovers will part …never!
many a writer and poet
and people of note
have stood on that platform ….and mused
with a bit of luck they could plot their next book
the main character could be you!!
If only Kulosaari Metro could talk
It would have many a tale to tell
they say’ the ghosts of the past patrol at midnight
checking that all is well
Rita Ryan
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DO NOT BEND ‘TIL FINLAND
I’m an exo-skeleton
My own walking x-ray
A long way from Mulgrave street
My heart at the wrist
Crown of thorns on my feet
My soft parts in your fist
Now shed an icy tear
And tell them I was here.
Brendan Hayes
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“Corners shadowed in summer;
clouds radiate in winter.”
– Trista Hurley-Waxali
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The Cyclopean Train Approaching Kulosaari
The man with the umbrella made from bats’ wings
is shaking the rain into your face. Each raindrop
is the memory of a missed train. In each train
is a woman with freckles like the spots on a lynx.
Then her face is a lynx’s face; there’s a pleading
songbird between her teeth. The umbrella
of bats’ wings takes to the air, makes a path
through the clouds of flies that have been deputised
as the sun. Suddenly the sun is shattered
into fragments of black glass. You pick a piece
from the ground and your finger bleeds straight away.
It bleeds uncontrollably and you have no choice
but to put your finger into your mouth. Then a train as red
as your bloody finger enters the platform. It is the train
that you have missed all your life. The doors open
with a hiss. The sky above is a deep green. Now is now.
John W. Sexton
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Irises
From the ticket office
To the stairs
The Labrador
Confidently guides
Then at the escalator top
The blind man
Gathers up his dog
Like Irises
‘Don Marcelino’s Daughter’ – Peterloo Poets, 2001 – Tim Cunningham
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Irises
From the ticket office
To the stairs
The Labrador
Confidently guides
Then at the escalator top
The blind man
Gathers up his dog
Like Irises
‘Don Marcelino’s Daughter’ – Peterloo Poets, 2001 – Tim Cunningham
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1. You are important to so many people.
2. Take a moment to say hi to a stranger.
Michelle Glasheen
These are actually wonderful ideas in regarding blogging. Anallise Dillon Tristan