"boxcars" poems
Doom train hurtling along
Through the fog in my mind
Towing freight, rectangular and oblong
Dim headlights, you're travelling blind
Five carriages long, excluding engine and caboose
Metal against metal, spitting sparks on steel
Undetermined path, rails will choose
Chugging along on dirt covered wheels
In the cabin, I see the light
Emanating from your furnace
Swallowing up coals in your gaping bite
Tongues of flames licking the surface
Fire breathing, spewing thick black smoke
Almost unseen, against the dark of night
A long plumy arm as if extending to choke
And plug the remaining sources of light
Meandering precariously on tracks that weave
Over uncharted, unfathomable terrain
Your store, so reliably you heave
Worming your way through my brain
What's in that cargo of yours?
What lies within those boxcars?
What drives you to diligently run your course?
What fuels you to travel near and far?
Loads of self pity, self loathing and self reproach
Snaking your way to an unknown destination
Screeching brakes as if a stop you approach
Herald the train of dubious intentions
Light is upon you, dark will dissipate
Your plumes starting to lessen from your stack
The dawn breaking horizon you didn't anticipate
To see another charging towards you on this very same track...
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 4:16 AM UTC
Light train chugging, working to outrun
Over exerting, pulling along your freight
Sand is running out under the diminishing sun
Fastidiously you tug on your enormous weight
Segmented equal in seven hulking proportions
Weaving between sleeping rocky giants
Assertion in your drive gifted from the high heavens
Borne of light your cargo load of tenants
Silver blurred rays glinting back as reply
As you power your way through
Defying seconds, before the last rays should die
Against odds, delivering what is due
Questing to alleviate my inflicted darkness
Spear of brilliance slicing through my mind
Illuminating the farthest and tiniest of crevices
Nook and crannies that willed me blind
Careful manoeuvring to keep your balance
Through scenic views fraught with treachery
Furiously working to keep your cadence
Hopeful of unloading the load you carry
What lies dormant in that cargo of yours?
What sleeps easy within those boxcars?
What stokes the fire to diligently run your course?
What promises you bear, travelling near and far?
Bales of hope and crates of strength
Supplies of kindness and self-worth
Reside within your immense length
Intact and lay quiet within your formidable girth
Reliant on the light that fuels and feeds
Your axles seem tireless guiding forth those wheels
Thundering over land with the power of a thousand steeds
Armed to your teeth with alloys and steels
Expelling grit and dirt as you pummelled across
Grey-white fumes, shoot up to the sky
Flag flogged by wind, billow and toss
Blaring your whistle as you race on by
Propelling forward, horizon up ahead
There it is...in all its tenebrous glory
Darkened locomotive seething mad with dread
Brace for the clash and the loads the two carry
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 8:03 AM UTC
The gates of Hell opened wide.
Six million souls stepped inside.
Beaten. Shot. Starved to death.
The words of God still on their breath.
Screams of anguish.Cries of pain.
Abhorrent laughter of the insane.
Mother's beg.Their babies moan.
They smell charred flesh and smoldering bone.
Cords of bodies in a row.
Frozen corps in the snow.
Gas clouds creep across the floors.
Hinges creek on oven doors.
Idle boxcars sit on tracks.
Inside lie bodies, in gruesome stacks.
The S.S. soldiers earn there pay.
They stoke the furnaces nite and day.
To the insidious cruelity
Of a madmans hate.
Six million Jews met there fate.
Remember them! Remember well!
Those souls who entered
The gates of Hell.
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 9:09 AM UTC
How far is it?
How far is it now?
The gigantic gorilla interior
Of the wheels move, they appall me ---
The terrible brains
Of Krupp, black muzzles
Revolving, the sound
Punching out Absence! Like cannon.
It is Russia I have to get across, it is some was or other.
I am dragging my body
Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.
Now is the time for bribery.
What do wheels eat, these wheels
Fixed to their arcs like gods,
The silver leash of the will ----
Inexorable. And their pride!
All the gods know destinations.
I am a letter in this slot!
I fly to a name, two eyes.
Will there be fire, will there be bread?
Here there is such mud.
It is a trainstop, the nurses
Undergoing the faucet water, its veils, veils in a nunnery,
Touching their wounded,
The men the blood still pumps forward,
Legs, arms piled outside
The tent of unending cries ----
A hospital of dolls.
And the men, what is left of the men
Pumped ahead by these pistons, this blood
Into the next mile,
The next hour ----
Dynasty of broken arrows!
How far is it?
There is mud on my feet,
Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam's side,
This earth I rise from, and I in agony.
I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.
Steaming and breathing, its teeth
Ready to roll, like a devil's.
There is a minute at the end of it
A minute, a dewdrop.
How far is it?
It is so small
The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ----
The body of this woman,
Charred skirts and deathmask
Mourned by religious figures, by garlanded children.
And now detonations ----
Thunder and guns.
The fire's between us.
Is there no place
Turning and turning in the middle air,
Untouchable and untouchable.
The train is dragging itself, it is screaming ----
An animal
Insane for the destination,
The bloodspot,
The face at the end of the flare.
I shall bury the wounded like pupas,
I shall count and bury the dead.
Let their souls writhe in like dew,
Incense in my track.
The carriages rock, they are cradles.
And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces
Step up to you from the black car of Lethe,
Pure as a baby.
3.6k
where do they go?
to mountains of synonyms
pushing lilac or purple
or puce or lavender
from valleys
of russet metaphors?
do verbs frollic?
nouns place themselves
before mirrors
asking themselves
"who am I?"
adjectives, do they
answer?
do the long words
most people don't
understand
do they go on
spending sprees
with their
million dollar
Lotto winnings?
do conjunctions
play matchmaker?
or hitch up
boxcars for
the more expressive
poetic engineers
to haul through
the long winds?
ghosts of past tenses
invade present
and mixed metaphors
haunt the nightmares
of learned readers.
gerunds run on
their little wheels
and stuff their cheeks
with prepositions.
where do words go
when they die?
they must hang as
DANGLING
PARTICIPLES.
May 17, 2017
May 17, 2017 at 7:26 PM UTC
*water streams from between your eyes
puddles fill the cracked streets
my rage is pure like angel fire
a love which nothing can defile
she wets the world with her dampness
thunder cries out for warmth
her shivering shoulders bare witness
to the sun and what was lost
the windy day kept me inside
holding onto this fright
feelings pressed against my chest
i tremble with delight
youthful arrows
morning sparrows
stargazing at night
just because you can do it
doesn’t mean that its right
streets of cobblestones are being shown
the pavement is our throne
home against the cement
dilapidated boxcars
and temples of respect
remove your shoes before you enter
yurts and cabins made of clay
barely resurrect
sustainable ways are coming back
give thanks and respect
to ancestors who deserve our praise
for they never did neglect
their duties to the earthly mother
her love they sought to honor
children of the wilderness at home beneath her cover
canopies of trees
line feline forests with her love*
Apr 24, 2017
Apr 24, 2017 at 10:31 PM UTC
In the air, floating just next to the window
solidly constructed
as sure as the golden highway
stretching from Frisco across the Bay
looking square
as the acres of boxcars
north on the interstate
on the south side of Chicago,
it's all atoms...
This morning my son postulated to me a so-far unrealized condition
relating to matter transmitters and, probably, hyperspace. "What
would happen, " he asked, "if some guy transported himself inside a big rock?"
Indeed.
Putting on my ears, I considered the situation. Would the hypothetical solid mass of rock give way, shudder just enough to allow the insertion of a soft, squishy human being? Or would the spaces in their respective atoms--rock's and human's--intermesh neatly with each other? Molecular integration? But such a challenge to the atomic bonds holding the things together might result in a nasty atomic accident. Would that leave a human-shaped void inside the solid rock, a mold exact down to the finest details of skin texture and even eyelashes? Imagine the crystal-filled waters seeping down to find such a hole--Behold!! Geode Man.
Holding my silver pen extended
like a rapier before me,
I dissect the wispy chunks
of smoke. The balance of air
that gave them form
is destroyed. They are
no more.
Aug 16, 2018
Aug 16, 2018 at 4:29 PM UTC
There are railroad tracks
That run through my town
And at night when I finally receive
The silence I wished for during the day
I can hear the faint whistle
And hum against my bedroom windows
I hear the whistle now.
All my life I have heard the trains
And I find beauty in the fact that even when I'm not listening, they are there
The trains carrying coal, chemicals, lumber, and the better parts of my childhood
As a child I loved the idea of the caboose
Allowing any stretch of rail
Any length of land
To be your home
Your bed
And it was probably through this my wanderer spirit grew.
All my life these trains meant something
Escape
But not without possibility of return
I romanticized the long web of rails connecting all the land and Souls in the American night
I have always loved such pieces of antiquity
So in the latter years of my childhood in high school it's no suprise the love I had for Steinbeck, Sandburg, and Woody Guthrie
I would lament to friends that the trains became too fast to hop, but I never tried
I always sat back and watched
Or listened on quiet nights
Now my childhood has passed
I am nearly 20 but wrapped in my head is the idea that the young boy who had train posters and pictures covering his walls was nothing but a stranger or a character in just another awful coming of age rerun
But deep down that child turned to Ginsberg who wrote of boxcars boxcars boxcars
And Kerouac who followed the long stretches of road to the western edge of America
And it was through Kerouac I found
Thomas Wolfe
I feel I have Thomas Wolfe in my bones
Thomas Wolfe who left home rejoicing train rides to the North
Then realized he couldn't go home again
Thomas Wolfe who never wrote a bad train scene
Not all of Wolfe is in me
Not the 1900s Southern prejudice
Or the raving accusing of friends of great treasons, only to have to apologize the morning after
But I can feel his need
To write all I can
To never take away
To add add
To never reduce because who tells Van Gogh "yes yer paintings alright but I need you to reduce the amount of stars by 30 and I expect it on my desk Monday"
I won't take anything away from myself
Only add
So at nights
When I hear the train whistle
And soft rattling on my window
Thomas Wolfe is with me
And he loves the sound too
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 11:13 PM UTC
On the other side of the pumpkin patch there lies a narrow path.
Just a dent in the woods it seems, until getting closer you can see
The ground worn smooth by those who know to use it.
A short, dimly lit way through the thick brush opens out
And suddenly you find yourself on the gravelly bank of a railroad track.
The track cuts a swath through the dense forest that leans over it
As if jealous of the ground taken from its midst.
In each direction the track finally loses itself in a tunnel of trees,
Curving out of sight to reach some distant and unknown end.
When the train comes through, robbing the woods of the solace of silence,
I wonder where it’s bound, and how long it will take to get there.
The rhythmic clacking of the wheels, the endless line of boxcars,
The power and speed of the thing arrogantly announces itself to all--
Blind to any purpose or direction other than its own inarticulate need.
As the trains moves out of sight, I look again at the empty track
And wonder about the choices I have made.
Jan 31, 2012
Jan 31, 2012 at 2:09 PM UTC
The boxcars empty and the track dead ends
But they'll be selling tickets til the world ends
Gold dust and lies
Glittered dust and lies
You've got your visions but your feet our on the ground
You're gonna wander this whole big world around
Chasing the skies
Always chasing the skies
Saddle up, hit 'em up
Take to the skies
Ain't no make can catch you
but believe me boy they'll try
Oct 24, 2014
Oct 24, 2014 at 7:06 PM UTC
From boxcars to cable cars
Those blues licks roll off the fingertips
Of mad men
Fighting with their last chance
For their last chance
Looking up at the skies
And crying out
For one last dance with the devil
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 7:18 AM UTC
It was the free speech zone
That crossed the line
That corral set up for us
To voice our grievances
Unto the King
But we are free men
Not cattle
And you don't give us our rights
We are Americans
We don't get into pens
Or boxcars,
For the record.
You cannot
Pen our thoughts or hearts
Like beasts
Waiting for the slaughter
You cannot imprison freedom
Within fences
That you *****
No matter how hard you try
We will fight and die if we must
Glady, we will fall
Before we will ever enter
Your free speech zone
We will leave our wives and children
To cry
And mourn our cold bodies
That will become headstones
In the desert
Telling all our story
Of men who lived
And died free
Dedicated to the brave men and women who chose to stand with Cliven Bundy against the power and might of the Federal government in the Nevada desert.
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 8:25 AM UTC
white blanketed trees and
iced over telephone poles,
rectangular flashes of color are
boxcars becoming a blur,
a monotone rainbow
smeared across the passenger window
sending subliminal messages that
say do not resuscitate but
you're falling away
with every rung of the railway
falling further behind,
step out onto the platform
tears falling down and
they're mixing with the rain,
no, this isn't home,
this isn't home.
Jan 30, 2012
Jan 30, 2012 at 8:58 PM UTC
How far is it?
How far is it now?
The gigantic gorilla interior
Of the wheels move, they appall me --- The terrible brains
Of Krupp, black muzzles
Revolving, the sound
Punching out Absence! Like cannon.
It is Russia I have to get across, it is some was or other.
I am dragging my body
Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.
Now is the time for bribery.
What do wheels eat, these wheels
Fixed to their arcs like gods,
The silver leash of the will ----
Inexorable. And their pride!
All the gods know destinations.
I am a letter in this slot!
I fly to a name, two eyes.
Will there be fire, will there be bread?
Here there is such mud.
It is a trainstop, the nurses
Undergoing the faucet water, its veils, veils in a nunnery, Touching their wounded,
The men the blood still pumps forward,
Legs, arms piled outside
The tent of unending cries ----
A hospital of dolls.
And the men, what is left of the men
Pumped ahead by these pistons, this blood
Into the next mile,
The next hour ----
Dynasty of broken arrows!
How far is it?
There is mud on my feet,
Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam's side,
This earth I rise from, and I in agony.
I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.
Steaming and breathing, its teeth
Ready to roll, like a devil's.
There is a minute at the end of it
A minute, a dewdrop.
How far is it?
It is so small
The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ---- The body of this woman,
Charred skirts and deathmask
Mourned by religious figures, by garlanded children.
And now detonations ----
Thunder and guns.
The fire's between us.
Is there no place
Turning and turning in the middle air, Untouchable and untouchable.
The train is dragging itself, it is screaming ---- An animal
Insane for the destination,
The bloodspot,
The face at the end of the flare.
I shall bury the wounded like pupas,
I shall count and bury the dead.
Let their souls writhe in like dew,
Incense in my track.
The carriages rock, they are cradles.
And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces
Step up to you from the black car of Lethe, Pure as a baby.
Aug 7, 2013
Aug 7, 2013 at 10:35 PM UTC
I used to play with toys, making boxcars crawl
Now I play with words until footsteps sound from the hall
Come to greet me, see what's there
Seven feet of cold despair
Six pack of soda, six seconds of looking at the birds
Then he goes, and I turn up the noise and turn back to my words
But my thoughts are jumbled and lost
Like French fries at the bottom of the bag
Fingers crossed
That the leafy green atop the grease will prolong my playful days
Not for Bambi or Snow White, but for all the different ways
That I can place my words and save them
Like the lifeguard guards a life
That I may find a voice to raise them
Like the hunter lifts a knife
Because words are cherished playthings
Which fly on paper wings
Until I'm called away and the words must go to sleep
I'l write them here so they may be your very own to keep
Jul 30, 2013
Jul 30, 2013 at 4:24 PM UTC
The punctual , eleven forty southbound train whistle's through our hometown of Palmetto ! Please tell the good folks of Montgomery , Mobile and New Orleans that I said hello !
Feb 15, 2016
Feb 15, 2016 at 11:54 AM UTC
We wore our shoplifted morals
on our very backs.
Shirts stained in lust and
revelation plain.
Lost in odes to obscenity
and ****** light in boxcars
to Ocean.
Fake wisdom chainsmoked
and chained up pressed
to the radiator, burned.
Seventeen looked twentytwo
and felt about a hundred
But danced like we were
young again in the ethereal
glory of the night.
But the nights turned to
minutia as we packed
Luggage filled with memories
on an outbound train to
Adulthood and Adolescence
was left waiting for you
by the tracks.
Trains trains trains
life and love gone flying
by at a mile a second
and the seconds are precious
and the miles are precious
and all the precious miles
and minutes still fly fly fly
speeding on train tracks
and we wave as friends become
blurred faces waving back
from portholes zipping
in opposite directions
and we becomes I and you
and I don’t quite know you anymore.
And this used to be beautiful:
Writing gibberish on
our arms and legs
when we ran out of paper
sleepless nights pouring
forth beautiful poetry
and utter catastrophe
twinkle-eyed laughing .
Driving streetcars through
Los Angeles to go get high
at the top of the world
and peal out when
the coyotes crash the party.
Summernight shamblings
and skinny dipping
and kissing caressing
ashamed of nothing.
Learning that peace
is only a word
until love breathes
life into its
lungs and that we could
breathe with each other
and breathe in each other
But our kindred fire
flickered and roared
only to flicker again.
sunken embers haunting
fingertips reaching,
but too far now to
ever touch again.
Charred and depleted,
flying in the tumult
of cyclone wind,
Memories stripped bare
and standing blasted by
the sands of time until
smooth and unrecognizable
they fade from our minds
Ashen shadows of smoke
from locomotive top-hats
chugging endlessly onward
to opposite stations.
10 October 201o
Oct 21, 2010
Oct 21, 2010 at 11:50 AM UTC
Rebellion – for too long the status quo,
is, in our day, a predictable show.
Antichrist irony, absurdity
shockingly daring incongruity
no longer shock the bourgeois, you know…
Alone in the temple of glass with a rock,
you’re out of traditional symbols to mock.
Surrealists did it much better than you –
and it meant a lot more in ’32.
You chew your cud on the cattle-wagon
overused shock-tactics (moo ! ) now draggin’
(or herding) aboard the iconoclast train
(b)lowing through boxcars your bovine refrain:
“to, um – make people think…” Oh Lord, how uncouth.
Nihilist narcissus – tell me, what’s Truth?
Must creative always be subversive?
I discern, in your frenzied discursive,
a dull and predictable lack of life.
While you brandish that plastic butter knife
I seem to note, in your constant ******
dearth of artistic ability. Must
bohemian acolytes (some yawning)
ever be deer in the headlights, fawning
before the ironic gesture? It’s sad;
the bitter is sweet but the art is bad…
They circle hors d’oeuvres on opening night
like moths around white wine in candlelight,
cerebrating in a modernist void:
contemporary aesthetes, overjoyed
to know once more that life has no meaning;
the planet is doomed; that kings are queening;
that chic just arrived, escorting philosophy
(Forgive us, Duchamp, for all this monstrosity).
I long for Hudson River School sunsets
Old Dutch Masters, religious art, portraits,
Red, green, or black propaganda-art? NO !
The view does not merit the price of the show.
I’m dada-ed to death, beyond the surreal.
Conceptual gimmicks have failed to conceal
your want of ability, values, and faith
In the book you despise it is written: “thus saith
the fool in his heart: that there is no God…”
You: Postmodern Art – to the firing squad!
Sep 10, 2015
Sep 10, 2015 at 9:57 PM UTC
My mom tried to sweep
clean the cigarette burns on the armrest,
and turned the plastic-cracked
lampshade away from rare houseguests.
The arrow-shaped gap melted
at the middle and leaked down
the shade like a stopped-
up gutter. Climbing out her bedroom
window, she knelt on the rotten
mint shingles and tossed matted
maple leaves as indiscriminately
as rock salt onto the glassy sidewalk
drinking in the overhead halo
of Penelec Electric and pine needles.
Needles—
The red biohazard suitcase
in the dining room is packed
full for distribution
in a Philadelphian switchyard.
City of Brotherly Burning Barrels
and railroad-tie benches—
but not for dressing up suburban
meditation gardens, or housing
yellow jackets and half-melted
Army men. For sitting, sleeping,
and supplying calf splinters
for small talk along the Schuylkill
River, watching the cell lights
of Eastern State get swallowed
whole by the systematic tall grass,
one by one, thanking some blessed
something for their freedom
in the boxcars, their *** and Lucifer
matches, and each other.
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
Is this raining sumer ending into september
With the bang of thunder coaxing the
Eight ball into the felts green exit rolling down the tubes of
Las vegas like red boxcars rolling away with
All the cash.
I hope so
I want our team to play
And shake cans of raineer
Beer in the pinical moments
Sucess.
And spray broken chalk conversations after
We harpoon the no 7 whales with our maple
Mcdermits. A universe of of black hole eight *****
Will mark are sucess in the end
When we shatter the rack like
The uviverses biggest bang
The sound creating the foot note
Of imtimidation after sinking melodic
Rythems and strokes in to
The corner pockets surrender.
This is how we win
This is the unicorns
Hope
We are and will
Become
One of the silver dollars
On the glorified bar.
Sep 6, 2013
Sep 6, 2013 at 5:30 AM UTC
The sun
A bullet hole
Burning through
The grey-white sky
Waiting on a train
At the crossing
Traffic standing still
Graffiti strewn boxcars pass
Artful dodgers
On steel canvas'
Leaving their unsung scars
Smoky music fills my head
One of those moments
In my memory scrapbook
Thoughts of one who
Used to make me know
All was good with the world
Mar 7, 2016
Mar 7, 2016 at 5:59 PM UTC
so you die.
in medias res (every story starts
in the middle) when
you awake from unsettling
dreams to find yourself transformed in your bed into
this city—
subway tunnels bursting with the hello(hello((hello(((hello))) of small children
and ***** words spraypainted by *****
minds onto *****
boxcars sitting like greyhounds
retired from racing and
awaiting the
slaughter—it will all
be beautiful later.
and when blinding light races
toward you
(every story ends
in the middle)
Nov 2, 2011
Nov 2, 2011 at 2:01 AM UTC
I like the wasteland
Frees my brain's storage space
In great big nothing
You have so much room to create
Trees and grass and houses
If that's your thing
I rather make up my own world
Listen to the whales sing to me
Through cracks in asphalt
A bubble grows
Snakes do cartwheels
I drink lava through pantyhose
I have no box to fill
No tan lines on my wrist
Wading through the portal's lagoon
Blow my paper swan a kiss
Look upon the rolling ground
It looks like moldy carpet
I hop into my taxi cloud
Get off at Martian market
Place one ear to the ground
I hear my records' rumblin' sound
Contort my body till I'm rubber
Fling myself onto another
Great big nothing
Nov 19, 2011
Nov 19, 2011 at 8:43 PM UTC
did we know that today
in 2016 we'd be reading the future
about the Great American
soft
depression interlaced
August 16 with Lehman
Goldman
Sach King David
how this time it will be
different but the bubble
starting
in 1995 always burst
even if its only two years
later Elizabeth Montgomery
died we were joining the Academic Mafia
around Circle Drive
Korean BBQ
Blues Caravan and
cruising around East Los
in a Blue Toyota pickup truck
now
there's a parked Prius
because we're too busy
running
numbers a racket
in Cambridge that leaves us
just a bit of fried egg in the morning
with coffee vorleser-ing and documenting
just
as any moral Hannah would do
in 1939 to say hey this is the way
we wanted right boxcars leading
to abattoirs today we do our best
imitation
of a weak McNamara
mea culpa
Jul 14, 2016
Jul 14, 2016 at 7:49 AM UTC