I haven’t written poetry in exactly a month. But tonight I did! of course at the cost of one of my angry rages which turned into a ridiculous episode of sobbing and dripping eyeliner and staining my pillow. But nonetheless, proved effective.
The trains sit deafening and forceful, beckoning like a force that drags in even the unwilling.
The choice is simple—east or westbound
I approach the landing and look at both trains at level.
The east is of no unusual sort, but calm and steady,
Reliable, and a guarantee of a safe ride.
The attendant looks friendly but homely, seems a bit tired or bored—either one, aren’t they the same?—and I wonder if there is woman who will ever love him.
He carries my bag as I walk up the stairs.
The seats are comfortable but worn, frayed but durable.
The windows have seen many days and nights, what do they know?
Sitting by me sleeps a wizened old man who reads the times,
And drinks a raspberry lemonade.
The bell rings and I find myself halfway up my seat-
There’s a murmur in my chest; like ice or fire
And I have made up my mind, on an act that rushes into my veins-
to switch trains
There is no attendant at all on the Westbound train, and I guess that he is making love to a Russian in a dark corner beyond the landing.
I struggle on the high landing but make it to the seats.
The air is smoky but darkly inviting, glasses clink,
The lights are dim but I can see the outline of faces, all awake.
They seem to laugh as I choose a seat by a man whose face is turned.
The windows show no view but the reflection of high-peaked mountains.
The seats are a luxurious velvet sort.
The people are laughing now, or are they crying?
Laughing, crying, laughing…it is my imagination, or they’re getting louder!
Oh the uproar!
‘I say,’ I touched the mans sleeve, ‘what’s that racket?’
The man will not turn though I see his breath fog the glass.
We are moving now, and at moments, instantaneously-
I feel afraid, then exhilarated.
The landscape and lighting changes through mere fractions in time, it seems.
At one point we’re in a field of poppies;
Then the poppies turn the color of blood, that red-like brown and shrinks as it dries, it’s dreadful.
Then sunflowers, but the faces are faces of men as faces crumple when men die.
Some peaceful landscapes appear but they seem painted,
Fake somehow, as if the light is a trickery
Then some horrible images that speak of more deception—irises
That look like human arteries, and
Roses gardens that speak of something sinister and
Reveals those deeply imbedded lusts for things uncivilized and beastly.
The train takes a turn for the worst and here we are—
A station that is not a station, for there is no going or coming of either way;
But a fog that carries the feeling of being lost in eternity.
The feeling is more than a name, but an ever changing presence, and
All at once I feel worldly, exhausted, ecstatic, despairing.
Was it wrong then, for me to ride the Westbound train?
Where it has lead me is a foreign place, unrecognizable,
But oozes with potential or menace
Would it have been better for me to have ridden the Eastbound train?
The land beyond the fog is dangerously inviting,
Like eyes of a jaguar, the night tells me of secrets waiting to be unfolded on her streets.
The thrill is endless,
But the ache of loneliness is more than I can bear
And, so,
Am doomed to tread the grim of the station that is not a station
Until I, too, become nothing.
The man beside me stepped off the train
And I saw he had no face.
I hope you enjoy the fruits of my manic-states. :]