! It's well written! It's just such a mixture of elevated nonsense and imagery and...well...peeing...that it takes the mick while becoming what it's mocking, surely!? Aka, I am an idiot who wants to be a poet. 
Status report Page 797
It's actually from a BBC book, 'The Nation's Favourite Poems', published in 1996, to accompany the last major BBC poetry season. The poem was voted for by the general public as part of the series.
Does not surprise me at all! Carol Ann Duffy got Laureate, so God knows what we're coming to.
She's just as crap as everyone else!
Read some Larkin! Or Wordsworth's "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" is beautiful.
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth, like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Quote: Scatterbrained Floozy @ June 26 2009, 1:04 AM BSTDoes not surprise me at all! Carol Ann Duffy got Laureate, so God knows what we're coming to.
It's a very good poem I think. The protagonist is (most probably) male and the poem is describing the very real experience of a man seeing a woman on a train and projecting all sorts of interpretations of her behaviour based on his own desire and attraction for her. The woman, no doubt, is almost completely oblivious to his presence, let alone giving off signals.
In the final verse there is an air of desperation and self-depreciation. The man associates himself with the toilet that she is sitting on, "peeing all over my face". It is a recognition of the desperation to be noticed and important to this woman, in however a humiliating way that might be. This is both evidence of his self-awareness of the absurdity of his imagination and of his desperation for recognition from the woman.
It is a poem about lust, loneliness, hope and desperation. It also captures what strange thoughts can occur (especially with men, I suspect) when in enforced proximity to a stranger of the opposite sex. One person's innocent and boring train journey (the woman's) can be an intimate relationship (through fantasy) for another (the man).
I think that the thing which gets me about it, negatively more than anything, is that it's such an anti-climax at the end, but having worded it like that, I suppose it's the point. I've often heard it said that there's the idea of people fantasising on trains regularly, but it's the vulgarity of it, somehow, the necessity to shock. I don't see that so much as intimacy as...not violation...but certainly some kind of absurdity. Or, maybe I'm just being a feminist about it as I can't shift the idea that if a woman had written this, she'd have been branded in a whole different light, imho.
It's a male poet deprecating the whimsical and ultimately futile lusts men have for attractive women. It's certainly in no way misogynistic. Neither, would I assert, is it vulgar. 
As for Carol Ann Duffy, she's a pretty darn good poet, I think.
WARMING HER PEARLS - Carol Ann Duffy
Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm them, until evening
when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,
resting in the Yellow room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.
She's beautiful, I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.
I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.
Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head ... Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way
she always does ... And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.
Agreed.
Darren played football last night and my legs hurt so much today. I shant be doing that again, I can't believe I used to do that for fun.
Chipolata's looking forward to the promised thunderstorms later.
Rain all over the glastonbury goers. Hahaha, have that. I went when it rained, horrible time.
I had thunder and lightning all day and night yesterday.
Bloody internet and Freeview and Sky all going off one by one. 
The lightning was very cool though.
Quote: Tim Walker @ June 26 2009, 1:31 AM BSTIt's a male poet deprecating the whimsical and ultimately futile lusts men have for attractive women. It's certainly in no way misogynistic. Neither, would I assert, is it vulgar.
As for Carol Ann Duffy, she's a pretty darn good poet, I think.
We're obviously very opposed poetically. ! I didn't think it was misogynistic, but maybe I am quite pretentious, and don't tend to like poems which end with peeing. 
Duffy just bores me, I guess, ever since she was so, so disinterested at Poetry Live. And "Valentine"? Ick. Why give anyone an onion? No matter how good an image it is, it's almost too overtly a symbol for my liking.
That pesky lesbo.