if a sound could be grainy
like a photo with the ISO too high
over-compensating for the light that shone too dim
through the patterned curtains in your bedroom
in your mother’s old house
where the peaches tasted better in water than in sugar and that had never
ever happened
not since you were three years old when your grandmother
who was not yet too old to do much besides eat TV dinners
and watch ‘the price is right’
before your grandfather’s funeral
where you ruined your velvet dress
spilling cheap coffee all over the bodice
(if it had been good coffee the situation would be
entirely different)
the sound of you
exhaling like a train rolling right past the house
shaking the walls and the floor and the sofa
less and less as it gets farther away
you sound
grainy
like a photocopy
and i can’t find
the original

It rolls past a snake in the night,
Steel wheels rattling along the rails,
Face bathed in flashing lights,
Looking down lit from above,
I see my own eyes reflect among them,
Travelling silent together through the dark,

Count the carriages then it's gone,
I'm left alone as it thunders on

Thursday morning and I board
the Preston train, a dumpy DMU,
but less of a cattle-truck today.

Over the bridge or beneath
lines to Platform 5 to wait:
Branson's Scarlet Pendolino
will glide in soon bound
for Birmingham - wonder
who I shall meet and share
travelling moments with ?

At the caverns of New Street
I must wend to Moor Street
and a Chilterns train trundling
me south for Warwick's 1,100th.
birthday weekend and 100 years
since trains of Lancashire PALS
cattle-trucked themselves to
Flanders fields never to return.

(c) C J Heyworth June 2014

I fell in love with you in the purchase of a postage stamp
I put your face and body and mind on paper
The way your hair curls
The way you jump with excitement and flap your arms
like a kid would on Christmas morning
How you were always there to turn to
Although I couldn't turn to you because you were never there
And by there I mean here, with me, where you should've been
I fell in love with the train tickets to you
The little orange squares like golden tickets
Granting me access to see you
To touch you
To share the foam of my coffee and laugh with you
at the man dancing at the hot dog stand
And when you finally stepped through my doorway
I swear it was Christmas and my birthday all at once
Planting my head on your chest
We bloomed and grew to heights I never knew was possible
And while little flowers blossomed at the ends of my fingertips
they grew on the tip of your tongue as you uttered those words
Those words to whom I have told but one; you
If I could find a word to describe the feeling of reading
the last several pages of a book you know has become your favourite
I would tell it to you
The hours that we whiled away and the ones that took up
the most of our day to get to each others arms before they took another’s
all meant something
And while the last bitter-sweet pages of our story have been read
Know that there's a girl who still writes you
You dance on the pages of her notebook
And while the postage stamps stay un-licked
She sends these poems to you
For in her mind you will always stay

The clocks are quickly ticking, rushing me further onward,
Yet nothing really seems to change aboard this grand train.
The starting station is long a forgotten sight from afar,
As a million only well-dressed people shut the curtain to hunt a star.

No things will halt The Times today, or our most important endeavours
Five down is completed now and – I stumble! (the train’s slowing judders)
Christ, my leg! – it’s filthy down here…. And I find suddenly there's no time for care  
Glancing through the compartment door – no: I’m transfixed, and I stare

Goodness. A gracious bombardment of purest light,
Crystalline, through the porthole’s grime.
Refracting into purples, and blues, and yellow sights!
So this is how beauty blossoms, allowed time.

Suits, ties, over-priced liquidised decadence
Are overcome, barely visible, amidst her the flower’s resonance
And blissfully reducing my colleagues to uttering, babbling nonsense
Until I hear the gunshot crack

The wheels regain motion
Re-shredding morals to smithereens
Though I cry, desperate to see her through bloodshot eyes
She’s left me only dark red puddles though the doorway

Rhythmic clunk
just as
my heart would jump
just as
too many times
burning right through
I’d trace the line,
that led to you.
A breeze of air
whips the hair
you never got to see;
claiming fairs
of all I couldn’t be.
Cutting through
interwoven lines
sunken view
good service signs
brought together
by the tube.
twenty-twelve and the whole world blocking my run
even London Underground didn’t want this one
to become
a two.

Hello?
Come and pick me up, in your worn down
car , I don't much care about the chipped paint.
Where do you want to go?
Anywhere, take me far away from the confines
of my prison,
let's ride around alien towns at night and settle in the
comfort of leather seats,
let's go visit the Grand Canyon as the tangerine
sun settles in the cradle.
And once your car gives up on us,
let's take a train to the ends of earth.
Please, help me run away from life because
I've just realized it isn't mine.
I'll be there soon.*
Please, don't take too long.

Sitting at the station, smoke fills my lungs and drifts away like memories of you.
Waiting for the train to peak around the never ending bend of tracks, I wait for not just a train but an escape.
I wait and wait until the rise of the moon.
I have places to go and plans to make.
One step at a time, isn't that how the saying goes?
I couldn't tell you, my steps are never going anywhere, it seems.
I wait for signs of trains and I wait to see the steam.
The big iron black, as black as the night you left.
Now I'm leaving too.
I look across the tracks and see inside a dinner.
The couples drinking coffee look nice, but baby, we were finner.
All that is behind me now, like the train tracks that are spit out as the train bustles me anywhere, everywhere, hopefully away from myself.
At least I'm leaving you, my dear, I'll pretend I was never left.
I await this train, it's down the track, you'll never stop me now.
I climb aboard, the engine roars and the conductor blows the whistle.
I flick that cigarette aside.
Never coming back.

Being young
Sitting in the passenger’s seat watching the rapid
Secretly racing
Always losing
Amazed by the speed
In which this train flew down the street
I still race the rapid
Only
I no longer lose
Bound to passengers and yellow lights I am not

I once saw someone hit by it
Feet lying in the street
Illuminated by blue and red flashing lights
Reflecting in the night’s sky
The story never made the papers

In my mind I keep seeing
Wreck after wreck
Train versus car
Bent metal
Screeching tires
Burnt rubber
Then silence
As bodies droop
Hunched over steering wheels
No superman to save them
No hope for ****** scenes

And I drive over these tracks
Holding my breath
Fearing the tires slipping
Or the gears failing
But I’m always safe
As I glide
Bump bump
Across
Never hit
Never crushed

My mind slips back
To the dead
Thinking that they never knew
What was coming
Never thought the tons of metal
Hurling toward them would
Hit

And as I drive away
Tracks fading in my rearview mirror
I wonder
If their thoughts
As they prepared for impact
Turned to superman

Trains at the bottom of the garden
metal dragons breathing out smoke and steam
huffing and puffing, waiting for the signal
some compact with tanks affixed
others larger, more grand
pulling colour matched tenders
sometimes bearing shields and names
beginning with 'Duchess' or 'City'
mostly black, some rusty
deep reds or greens
with contrasting lines edged in gold

Once one came in matt pink
and I wondered why it didn't gleam
like the others, perhaps pink
was a colour not to be given
it's equal due with other
less feminine shades
it had to be denied vibrancy
yet I loved the pink one best
later I learned somehow
that the colour was that
of the primer used
to inhibit the rust
and my pink engine
was just an unfinished paint job
pressed into service
prematurely to give cover
for another that was broken

I wrote down the numbers regardless
it was a ritual that one performed
though I didn't understand why
yet it was exciting
to record a new one
that hadn't passed before

Behind the business end
came carriages laden heavy
with the visitors of summer
come to fill our beaches
and our town with their loudness
their raucous laughter
with strange accents
brummie, scouse, mancunian
faces pressed against glass
expectant, excited, impatient
almost there now
anxious that this last delay
pass quickly and the half mile
remaining be completed

We would lurk beneath the bridge
like adopted troll children
it was cool there in the summer heat
darting out from behind pillars
or in my case watchfully, cautiously
edging my way forward
to place pennies on the track
or sometimes nails
then to retrieve them
flattened, thinned, squashed
once the train had passed
sometimes we'd wait hours
or so it seemed
sometimes no train would come
and we would trail home
for tea and bath and bed
leaving our offerings
to the gods of the rail
for rediscovery and inspection
the following day.

Cynthia Pauline Jones 17/10/13