school starts soon
smoking joints on the weekday afternoon

in a sidelined shady
freight car, property of
Norfolk Southern

debating if this car will be
northbound or southbound
and master-bating our fantasy
where we want to be taken

knowing full well maybe one of us -
(and they all looking at me)

will get out of this car and live to
see foreign places without having to
return in a body bag

we argue lazy who should go get the beer,
collect the quarters and sweaty dollar bills
and **** if I am not reappointed
leader of the beer fetching

besides it’s my
tan lab panting needing water so it’s my
responsibility and the nasty liquor store owner don’t hate me that much as the others so he’ll sell me beer without too much **** talk (some for sure)

asking where I’m laying low on a **** hot day like this one

tell him i’m getting on a train getting out of this two bit town which makes him reminisce and ask which direction

could be northbound could be southbound
hell could be west
but for sure won’t be
going eastbound

cause I seen the Atlantic and didn’t like it

too **** big and too **** cold,
too **** mean

Standing in the tunnel
at Eighth and Pine station,
I survey westbound commuters
waiting across the tracks  -
standing arms akimbo
or leaning on marble walls.
A well-suited young man paces the platform -
cell phone pressed to his cheek.

    [Passengers stand clear of the
    edge of the platform at all times]

Rushing in from the east,
a gleaming white chariot
arrives - pauses - resumes
leaving the far platform vacated
as if by alien abduction

From the left a blazing light
pierces the  tunnel
and the Shiloh – Scott eastbound
halts and snaps open its doors.
crossing the threshold.,
I claim a seat by the aisle.

    [Please stand clear! Doors are closing]

With eyes half shut I scan the crowd:
uniformed workers wearing ID's,  
a toddler’s arms and legs
dangling off his mother's lap,
An elderly couple talking softly.

The soft clatter of wheels
and the gentle side-to-side sway
rocks us like a cradle -
memories of the long day
melting into thoughts of home.

    [Fairview Heights Station.
    Doors open to my right]

The lady with the toddler steps off.
A trio of teenage girls
fresh from the mall
seek and find empty seats -
filling the rear of the car
with the music of their chatter.

Streetlamps scatter shadows
over parking lots.
The unseen country side
slips by under cover of darkness.
Headlights gleam like jewels
waiting for crossing gates to lift

    [Next stop Belleville Station
    Doors open to my left]

I clutch my lap top,
work my way to the door
and wait for the train’s full stop

Stepping out into the frost filled air
I pause to watch the sleak white chariot
vanish on the eastern horizon.

September,  2006

the sky pulls its downy clouds
eastbound, up to her horizon,
for the spring is cold and
she is resting.

the sky, as cool as ice,
filters through the feathers,
hints of her just beyond
her night-darkened blanket.

While I watch the lightning fade
I could be there for you
The danger blurs along the horizon
We hold close a vision of oneness

In a sudden calming of the sky
There could be a place for you and I
When the gusts of urgency melt
Dispel the heat of life’s blood

A new dawn could be birthed
With a surge of pleasure
We’d come to the precipice of pain
And the stars would know we’ve crossed

Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small ****** bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hoarded these constants into morning
only to find them gone.

For all the tensions,
the connections and hastened breath,
I don't think it's you who I'll
end up with.

All estuaries flow eastbound, and the subterranean rail tracks keep forcing against the estuaries’ grain and dust foundations perpendicularly to them.*



How can a sane proposition -- a quantification of syntax execution (those squirming cuticles through bonds of regression)— an excessive reflection, reflexive inspection,

Prove its sanity through continued suggestion?



Deductive insurrections stirred in memory,

A rumble, causing sediments to crumble,

Wineglasses balanced atop countertops tumble.

Spilling contents upon the grained wooden, elitists' floors.



"Anesthetic, onsetting tuberculosis in breath patterns,

Gavels ringing on rigged tolling tongs in caverns,

Dark tolerances to Copernican astronomy in shadows,

And the handle grinds as boxcar wheels' flints and steels catch and spark in addled locks," I mumbled from a half-nap.



It was surgery, the smooth procedures on the moving trains,

The gains and plectrums scraped against the brains' spider veins,

To reorganize the sane, to bridge the broken definitions changed,

To prevent arguments' bone structure from fractures and sprains.



"Use gavels against the scalpels, sculpt with their judgment," a corona dream's habitant corrugated.

He pounded the gavel's end against the knife to chisel at the pituitary gland pulsing in his subject,

And her arms flailed like a horse's legs in heat-induced convulsion.
I thought it was done.



The Canson Merue train screamed in the night under earth to Yellowknife to meet Canadian soil as the Heavy Breather pounded his gavel.

I won't see you take to the sky
like an eastbound ****** of crows
but I'll greet you in our nest.
until then

Eastbound sundown on the I-84, the sun in my mirrors.
I imagine standing on the beach in Klamath
watching it say good morning to the other side of the world
with the girl of my dreams cradled in my arms asleep.
But the land here is different, the grass is dead
and that girl doesn’t escape my thoughts.
She stays in there, waiting for me to fall asleep
so I can hold her again in the darkness for a few minutes.

Pocatello to the left, Ogden to the right,
where is it I should go tonight?
I heard of an Aberdeen near here, a home away from home.
Maybe it looks the same as the Aberdeen I know.
I move into the left lane, the fast one if you’d believe,
because here in America everything’s the wrong way around.
Last chance now to change my mind, final call for Ogden.
The slip-road passes by me and joins another highway
that seems to ascend into the horizon and disappear completely.

The landscape here is unbearably flat,
I feel myself longing for just the slightest rise or fall,
let myself feel the curvature of the world ever so slightly.
There is a hill on my right that looks just like my Bennachie,
rising sharply to a peak then slowly flattening out
until it joins the inescapable flatness of this country.
Raft River, American Falls, Pocatello,
fourteen, thirty-seven, fifty-eight.
Many miles to go before I can sleep,
many more miles to go until I am home.
Sixteen miles just to the next rest area.

I wanted to drive around Raft River
but I couldn’t see it from the road
and I didn’t know how far it was to Aberdeen.
What looked like a diner was by the road on the right.
The dust swirled up around the solitary pickup parked outside,
the owner looking like the guy in Nighthawks with his back to me.
There was no fancy couple there,
just him on his lonesome in Idaho alone.

Exit 36 points me in the direction of American Falls and Rockland.
This was where I was told to turn off at.
The slip road rose up towards the next road, and it felt wonderful,
finally feeling like I was actually going somewhere,
The signpost at the top of the rise
shows me the way to go to Aberdeen.
Left I go, to American Falls.

Through the city I drove, trailers and bungalows together.
There were big trees in the front and back yards
but they were not too dense that they looked unseemly,
in fact, they added character and life in this place.
A cat darted across the road, waking me up,
warning me not to keep my eyes off the road too much.

The end of the road, stop sign, no others giving me direction.
To the left, the road went around another corner
to go back in the direction I came from.
I took to the right and followed the road,
trees and houses on my right, wasteland to my left.
I went over a crossroads and stopped at the next,
exasperated at the lack of signposts.
I parked next to a long bungalow
with a red-painted ramp going up to the door.
An old woman wearing an apron covered in flour answered,
and she found my accent pleasing
when I asked her the directions to Aberdeen.
She offered me a cookie, and I accepted,
I hadn’t had food since I left Oregon
even though she said I was not far from Aberdeen.

We said our goodbyes and I turned left,
continuing on a road that curved to the right
and through a well-manicured little park.
It was unusual seeing grass this green,
having been offered greys and yellows
for most of my journey in Idaho.
I turned left at the police station then left again.
A large body of water, Snake River I think it was called.
It’s hard to call it a river, more like a lake,
the water the same shade as the lochs back home.

After a few miles, I make it to Aberdeen,
the signpost informing me the population is just over a thousand.
I have a feeling this Aberdeen will be different to mine.
The houses here are so small, but they have good gardens.
There is a warehouse with potatoes inside it.
I am a long way from home tonight.
I can’t find a motel, so I stop at a bungalow covered in windows.
A ***** gold pickup sits outside.
I knock on the front door, which is on the side,
because this is America and everything’s the wrong way around,
and a middle-aged man wearing a mullet
and a Phish tank top answers.
He invites me in and says I can stay as long as I need,
offering me food and beer and company.
They people here are nice, much friendlier than the old Aberdeen.
I like this new Aberdeen, it feels like a home already.

I dreamed well that night, the girl in my arms,
sitting by Snake River, watching it flow,
carrying away all my troubles.

Outside, heading eastbound
It's getting warmer outside,
sun is shining, sky is blue.
It all feels right.

Out for a few nights,
music is so loud
colours going everywhere; blue, green, yellow, red, purple;
kaleidoscopic
I wanna dive in
and swim
I miss the tropics.

Pain all around
shooting following shooting
I'll work it out
distant chatters just
filter out into choruses
and phase out.

Ringing in my ears
nose bleeding
memories fading
no more colours
just black

**...

As the morning sun arises,
creeping slowly ever higher,
it transforms the glass like waters,
to a true river of fire.

And as the glass is shattered,
by the eastbound fishing fleet,
the good folk of Richibucto,
turn over in their sleep.

But as the day progresses,
this small town comes alive.
People go about their business
like bees around a hive.

And as the day draws to a close
with ice-creams in our hands
we stroll along the boardwark
or walk along the sands

So if you like the quiet life
tranquility not fuss
next time you need a place to go
come drop anchor with us.

They say
All roads lead to Rome but
In the Tristate the tracks
Bring you to New York.
This cement platform smells
Like **** but the anticipation
In the air while the crowd peers down
The track for the 6:16  p.m. Eastbound
Train to Penn you'd think
NJ transit was delivering us to
Heaven.

Anchormen every morning
Famed KC's three-sided hub.
Traffic northbound,
Southbound,
Eastbound,
Westbound.
Honks and blinkers all resound
In one ear and out the other,
Distant memories of highways
I'd never traveled nor cared about.

Now you've brought them meaning
I've passed over every road
Racing to you
Then cruising and dreading visits' endings.

i.

Such is their reward, then,
This graceful bridge bisecting the lake at Bemus Point,
Not far from the spot where Bishop Vincent
Parsed the geography of the holy land,
Narrow beaches fronting a higgledy-piggledy of cottages,
Most comfortable but staid,
Though the odd McMansion grotesquerie
Has sprouted here and there,
Courtesy of some frozen-food magnate in Buffalo
Or casino second-in-command from Niagara Falls
(Those more famous waters, apparently,
Insufficient to slake ones thirst for the gaudy)
In any case, likely no more than admired from afar
By those generations of boys
Who, leaving their spot on the line at Crescent Tools
Or fields rife with bumble-striped heifers,
Never returned, drill press unmanned, corn crib unattended.

ii.

You’d been on those waters once, however,
Spending an afternoon both bewitching and idyllic
On a dock fronting a relatively humble beach bungalow
(A friend of a family friend or relative’s place,
The whos and whys lost to the manila folders of recollection)
With a girl of ten, perhaps twelve at the outside,
Beautiful in an untrammeled manner,
Or at least primarily, unconsciously so,
And you remember her having green eyes
Which utterly belied description
(Though that was all long ago,
Such reminiscence likely no more than the rheuminess of memory,
And you have not returned to that shoreline since.)

iii.

Such daydreams are perilous, on many levels,
At seventy miles per hour even more so,
And you shake yourself back to the present
While approaching yet another bridge
(Humble span noting humble beginnings)
Honoring the region’s most famous daughter and her husband,
Who did indeed have much ‘splaining to do,
As you proceed eastbound toward Salamanca
(Wholly owned by the Seneca Nation,
Those non-native descendants of Mertzes and McGillicuddys
Paying rent and fealty to the tribe each year)
And thence to the slump-shouldered hills
Which shelter the sauntering Allegheny,
The pines thick, green, inscrutable,
Beyond our everday squabbles,
Answerable to nothing but time itself.

Over the terra umbra belt of the western plowlands
Fog intense esplanades separate-
vital pasture from albedo creekside
Diesel motors varnish the misty sunlight-
divide
Hereford cattle demand the cucumber green
lowlands
Morgan hillsides carry eastbound into
the coming day

Cold , clear creek water hitchhiked from Alabama , caught a thunderstorm
just the other side of Anniston ..
It rode into Palmetto at the stroke of midnight , jumped off a wall cloud and hit the ground running !
Straight down Main Street taking everything it could carry .. Pine straw , old newspapers , bubble gum wrappers ! Oak leaves , bottle caps and fast food napkins !
The storm came and went , city life returned to normal  , a hundred gallons of well travelled transpired water now has it's eyes set on the city of Savannah ..
It'll bide it's time in the heat of Palmetto , laying in a storm sewer waiting to be called skyward ... A one way ticket on the 'Evaporation Express' ,
riding within an eastbound thunderstorm , dropping in on another little city to clean and cool the street , meet at the bottom of a hill to start the journey all over again ..

Arkansas skies, endlessly wise and wider than the bluest tide
Dam closed so **** close to the edge, bullishness of the blueish hue
Borders of the borderland shuffles eastbound,
walls get built and torn back down
To see a thousand sunsets, grows tiring
Turn my back, decision made to see no more

Stormy day , rising , pollen laced puddles
Obsidian , squally countryside backdrops -
with aromatic Wisteria infusions , humid , sunbeam fueled -
certain windstorm conclusions
Citywide , asphalt stained vehicles , rain engulfed curbside -
rivers at full pool , diesel fumes swallowing available air
at four-way intersections
Discarded paper , eastbound swayed hardwoods
Snapping flags cry out in brief , turbulent episodes
Evergreen needles at hours disposal
The mechanized voices of late afternoon
travel and corruption

What if the world is ending
and our future's not for long
what if we're merely bending
what's been broken all along

How long can we be silent
to our fellow passers-by
wondering where our time went
living, dying to know why

Where oh where can love be found?
in this twisted human race
**** the West, then march Eastbound
we're no doubt nature's disgrace

And what's to say about dismay?
that somehow we've not yet gotten
money is all they take for pay
to confess our sins, forgotten

The searing flame, I've learned to tame
to appease those in fear of fire
you fool yourselves in search of fame
honesty creates the liar

And who's to blame behind the shame?
the king, or we, the lowly pawns
to us of course it's all the same
oh well, long live we kings of cons

But what if we're just lonely?
what is right becomes all wrong
what happens when "if only"
means "i've waited much too long"

A blistering , tense July -
as the view begins to 'silver'
Excitement builds in the dancing -
trees , petrichor fills the Western -
breeze
Robins bound from tree to ground
Insects at the will of life's current -
are rushed eastbound at the 'Lightnings
Command'
The mercy of 'Michael' is now at hand
Half dollar sized drops of rain begin to fall
'The Summer War of the Piedmont' has officially begun* ...

Having fallen into trances before
I am no stranger to the spectacle
I am just a thimble
And you, my love
You are the needle

Together, we sew the regal robes of this affair
With silver heartstrings tout and bare
I am perched on electric fences
And it's true, my love
You are the current

Leaving steps behind heavy feet
These stitches are losing their strength
I am neither a bridge nor water
But I drown in blue, my love
You are the anchor

This loft reeks of expired sunlight
While eastbound clouds obstruct my view
I am no stranger to my senses
But it's no use, my love
You are the senselessness

Calico gloomy rail yards
Steel vessels whine , brakeman -
locking cars against Winter sky backdrops
Painted horseman bound for Augusta -
tonight , through Conyers , Rutledge and
Union Point
Eastbound dedication passing rural
depots , breaking the twilight silence -
for many a mile , lighting each crossing -
as it slowly rumbles down the meandering line ...

The ship has set sail into an ocean, black and calm.
Just this morning, you got the letter from your mother,
Handwritten in felt tip, slightly stained with a tear,
Telling you to keep warm and stay safe,
To fill your stomach and fill you pockets.

As your sister stands on Dublin's docks to see you off
and wish you well.
She shrinks with the distance growing between you and her, and
She looks twelve and three quarter years younger than she is today,
The little girl who you fought with all the live long day over nothing.
Now, she's the women who put up a fight over your sailing away.
Sometimes, brothers and sisters never change.

She knows that this is for the best,
but she would never admit that,
Not with words,
She feels her words, weightless; would just sail right away with you.
You wonder what she will look like if you see her again,
Will she have received wrinkles from worrying about mother?
Will her chestnut hair have turned white as the snow burying her bare feet?
As she thinks that you can no longer see her,
she's succumbing to the cold,
She starts into her coughing fit,
you watch with desperate despair

On the Eastbound coffin ship.

-Jamie F. Nugent

Jammed in like sardines and it seems all too familiar,
Kinking like a caterpillar as we jink down the aisle,
seats to either side of me filled with idle curiosity and I stand between them.

Breathing like old men the carriages carry, homeward, Eastbound and at last,
I found a seat.

Beats me why
I bother.

Up at quarter after seven
out by hopefully eight

take the 36 or the 199 rocket
eastbound to Finch

about nine minutes
give or take, seven stops

then southbound thirty minutes
to Bloor, cut to St. George

down to St. Patrick
they're not really saints

I have my own key
even though I shouldn't

so I let myself in
and tiptoe to you

you know I'm here
because it's Friday

and you smile while
I slip into bed with you

and hold you
until we wake up.

Whippoorwills and high flying airplanes
Church bells and eastbound trains
Cattle moving throughout the night
Killdeer songs in the morning light
A Postman waves while making his round
A buck at the hedgerow , a diesel plow
Shimmering fields , dancing oaks
Burning hickory , field smoke
Black coffee , a stack o' wheats
Frosted windows and strick-o-lean* ...

Coifs of lightning disentangle
under a black cloud lattice.

Thunder rustles to rude growl,
bracelets of leaf are trembling.

We're eastbound, hundreds of us
on this loosened buckle

of corrugated silver flash.
The rain attacks the window

in excoriating scrawls
slivering down into a sluice.

Red-shirted woman, run now,
over the yawning pool

that shivers with addition.
Blue-breasted runner, fly,

fly into clay-colored false dusk
that heaves with humid breath.

Escape from this wet hunger
that walks over us so indifferently.

We stumble nightward. Rain laces
our eyes shut. We're alone here.

There is a place in boundless Space
where constants are not so.
Where entropy runs in reverse,
There Time must backward flow.
Imagine two parallel railroad tracks,
Set across the arc of space.
Our train is bound forever West,
headed towards that sunset place.
Now imagine that I could disembark
at a station on the way.
Eastbound tickets would be expensive
but I’d sure be glad to pay.
I’d buy a seat for Epsilon
and watch the past flash by
like the memories a brain recalls
in the seconds before it dies.
I’d de-train the day before you left,
knowing what I knew not then.
Then we would have another chance
To enjoy what might have been.

On the shoulder of I-84’s
overpass as eastbound
enters Portland,
an almond tree
lets down its fruit.

Her petals,
pink the same as preschoolers
color the sky
and white as the paper
beneath the wax,
tremble in the violence
of Internationals
and Peterbilts,
the same violence
that grabs fistfuls
of my sweater
in intervals.

Jack under, jack up,
lug nuts off after a fight
and this freeway tumbles
in a storm of those flowers
cast off in April-sun,
I am down a layer and sweaty.

Steel wire arcs where sidewall was
and rubber gralloch marks its death,
those eight seconds of braking
behind, those eleven tree species
lined as a windbreak.

      I am lucky to have stopped
      beneath this almond.
      It is the only tree in bloom
      along this stretch.
      Its softness has lessened the day.
      Her olfactory embrace deadens
      that of axle grease and sunrot.
      I am not afraid of those trucks
      passing a wrench-span away.
      This is enough, for now.