Last Train Home

One-thirty-one, last train home
Licence runs till two
DJ holds the final record up
Choose the train
Or choose the tune

Grew up between two postcodes and two tongues
English at school, Yoruba when Mama called
Her proverbs never travelled word for word
But every rhythm landed clean
Tonight this basement carries both
Garage on the snare, log drum underneath
Bouncer checks the clock beside the stairs
Coat-check queue already bends around the wall
Last train board glows on somebody's phone
Twenty minutes left before the doors
DJ asks, One more? and every hand goes up
We know exactly what that answer costs

One-thirty-one will leave without us
Two o'clock will close the room
But nobody reaches for a coat
Till we finish this tune

Last train home can leave without us
One more song before the lights come up
Lock the basement—we will carry the chorus
Last train home can leave without us

Half past
Don't look
Coat check
Not yet
One more song
Then the night bus gets us home

Two-fifteen, coats on, cold in our teeth
Seventeen of us on the top deck back
Coat-check girl kept the last note singing
All the way from stairs to bus-stop rain
Someone has a speaker at three percent
Someone else remembers every word
Driver watches through the mirror twice
Then turns the cabin radio down
The basement is six streets behind us
But the same chorus fills a different room
Each red light gives the crowd one more bar
London moving underneath our feet

Last train gone
Night bus long
Nobody reaches for headphones yet
The whole top deck is holding the note
We have not finished it

Last train home already left without us
One more song while the night bus turns
Lock the basement—we carried the chorus
Last train home already left without us

Half past
Still singing
Cold glass
Still singing
No dance floor
Still singing
Top deck
Bring it home

The bouncer closed the room—that was his job
The room was never the point
A licence can stop speakers at two
It cannot decide where the last four bars end
So we finish them beneath the bus shelter
Breath white in the cold
Seventeen voices
Still in key

Last train home already left without us
Night bus rolling while the city wakes
Lock the basement—we carried the chorus
Curfew got the room, it never got the sound
Last train home can leave without us
We took the song all the way across town

Peckham basement, empty now
Next address already in the group chat
Last train gone
Chorus still ours