"railroads" poems
i am sitting and pressing green paint in misshapen swollen dots on my nail beds and thinking what if i mess this up? i am notoriously bad at fingernail painting and i ruin it and i am also afraid i will ruin myself by loving you.
yes, yes i hear you like a train. my head is all railroads and oceans, but i hear you puffing and whistling he does not love you, he would not love you, he loves her. long hair hazel eye i am not her i cannot be that girl i do not want to be his girl
but i want him to want me
oceans
trains
Mar 4, 2018
Mar 4, 2018 at 9:59 PM UTC
HUNTINGTON sleeps in a house six feet long.
Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned.
Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes, sir.
Blithery sleeps in a house six feet long.
Blithery dreams of rails and ties he laid.
Blithery dreams of saying to Huntington: Yes, sir.
Huntington,
Blithery, sleep in houses six feet long.
8k
mean beam bottom ***** without reluctance.
\\ air above \\
since forever baby boy: since forever liquid sparkler.
he has sense
& peanut butter jelly geography to his page.
his romance is of the west.
his eyes are of dandelions kicked & to the wind.
he moves like ancient turtle migration.
reaches feet to sidewalk \\ sand to depths \\ ride \\
night:
velcro-tightened mind withstanding.
party lights, ***** willows, retro punch, he
is orpheus descending: with all the elements positioned just so.
\\ jellyfish electric \\
he says he likes the loneliness.
he says it’s the water.
& so he moves \\ wills himself into the next measure.
liquid resolute bits.
so move \\ orca \\
curl of eye \\ so ride \\ black rollo wave \\
basilica \\ & \\
coral reaches below \\\\\
he likes to tell it, with warmed exaggeration.
slow-motion buffalo stampede. ride the railroads free & easy.
orange glowing bars of elsewhere. oscillating seal calls.
oily portland hipsters howling on the beach. those
juno cheeked rosy-red lips.
somewhere, sister getting married.
spring, summer, fall, winter, spring.
africa girl on a branch of a tree of a forest, overlooking elephant burial grounds.
color & white material:
plantations, gas stations, diners, & sharks.
this is the morning lunar \\
sweet blue beach of the old & awakening.
he crawls out & into her breaks.
her deep heights & bombora reef. the serotonin
functions twice, exposed between thin tissues of warm-blooded neurochemistry.
human, shown.
he is as a raw page, blank, yet
dipped \\
\\ so ride \\ bulbous waves of air mother agua \\
ride \\ &
\\ ride \\ &
brew by light these occurrences forever.
Mar 28, 2014
Mar 28, 2014 at 4:41 AM UTC
my polygamous relationship with you distances me from the monotony of monogamy and makes me feel lonelier than the loneliest mundane monogamist. my mere apologies for my misendeavors, the malnutritious morals of my miseducation propose metal mirrors and castaways controlled by cutting carvers, craving crazy letters and loyalty from lengthy lies and lonely lives. lethargy overtakes and vowels reign, raining drops like rainbows and rocks in rivers, rusting relationships, rusty railroads at intense intersections entwined in everything inside and nothing on the outside anymore except these
muscles. we are back at the beginning.
my mind marvels in the magic of the memories, the madness of the morbidity and the hesitations of your reaction. his, I take, is misunderstood as my misfortune, but it is not a miss, my fortune: it is a fox in feathers colorful like friendships 'fore their forfeited and feigned approval, forced for fear of polygamy tho' it promises the purest pleasure, the most personal independence and precious pearls of princes, princesses, powerful, plight-less
poetry. peace surrenders,
souls surprise themselves, surprise their cells, call for curious catastrophes to take place. colorful and calm they coincide with cooperation that can not contain the context of truth, of teases, of teasers and targets and tonal dualities and we endeavor, we endear you, we dare destroy the darkness of the devil in its disguised diamonds.
words lie at my feet like pebbles of poetry and I promise personal demise, deterioration and ridiculous obsessions- there's madness to be had and fragments to be written and I play with silly alliteration instead!
serious and serene you stare as if my sanity has slowly faded and I sternly helplessly smile shyly. I suppose you are sincerely offering me your blessing before parting, so stumbling slightly I surrender…
if this is the prevailing promise of mere mortality, I'm graciously aware I was worthy of words.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 2:01 PM UTC
We're all writers that don't know where our pen will take us,
Artists who's thoughts and emotions flow through our paintbrush,
A wall painted black, then white, then green, then multi-coloured,
It's changing,
Everything's changing,
Who are we fooling? Why pretend?
None of us are the same as we once were,
It's the demons inside of us that grow and mutate,
They puncture holes in our hearts and rip out our souls,
The deeper we sink, the more broken we see ourselves,
And the hate that we feel for our imperfections run harsh cuts into our skin,
Shivers across the lines of fields shaded red,
It's hard to keep the screams inside,
The rain behind our eyes remind me of shadows,
Pumping blood like butterflies in tunnels of glass,
The railroads to our hearts are barred with electrified wire,
Spinning webs of glutinous barriers,
Fleeting highs when fingertips touch love and trust,
Cut loose, like the strings of a puppet,
Trying to crawl back up the ladder of shattered china,
Back to that splintered paradise.
Aug 23, 2013
Aug 23, 2013 at 11:47 AM UTC
I live in the land
Of the inbetweeners.
We are what
The French would call,
Bourgeoisie.
What the ghetto calls,
Bougie.
What the successful calls,
Day dreamers,
And what we call,
The future leaders.
I live in
The land of rebels.
The people who fought against their oppressors
Because they know the truth behind
Social Darwinism;
And the fact of the matter is
That no race
Is a superior race
Because "race"
Is a manmade idea
To justify the injust
Ideas of slavery.
The rebels who ran out of chains
Because they weren't
Supposed to be chained down.
The rebels who walked midnight railroads
To escape the clutches
Of the white man's burden.
The rebels who refused to stand
In one spot
When there were plenty of seats available.
The rebels who refused
to bite their tongues and
The rebels who refused to be spoken over
Because they had
A lot of important stuff to say.
The rebels who dreamt outrageous dreams,
So that the complexion
Of your pigment
Was never a deciding factor
In your life.
The rebels who refused
to follow unlawful laws
Because they were
Law abiding citizens
Only when laws were just.
The rebels who challenged what was superiority,
The rebels who changed the course of history forever.
I live in
The land of the outsiders
Who conform the
Preconceived ideas
To fit them
We roll small blunts
of white paper
Filled with the words
of novels and poetry
And blow through those books
Inhaling every letter
And letting it cling to our lungs
Flowing the grammar
Throughout our bodies.
We stand spittin
Absolute value bars
Rapping elongated equations
Of X equals
Y +/- root Z
Divided by root A
Times the quantity of
B - C.
We stick up
Banks filled with
Material and instruction.
Stealing all the information we can take
And try peicing it together
So that more than words
We have knowledge.
We **********
Our brains,
Pleasing its sapiosexual
******* with
Grammar and arithmetic.
I live in the land
Of the inbetweeners.
The people making history
In their everyday lives.
The revolutionaries
Who fight for even
The smallest of issues.
The individuals who stand out
Amongst a crowd of people
That look just like them.
The inbetweeners,
They who refuse
To subjugate themselves
To society,
But will subjugate society
To themselves.
Feb 8, 2014
Feb 8, 2014 at 4:08 PM UTC
caveat! —bursting out as the fuse fetters away
wafting t'ward oil spills, tranquilized guns
with pace maker minds
and time to ****
sickle celled, graving shores
plead to crawl underground
through cascading bile and sedatives
that sift through these negatives
like bangled thieves
who crawl on broken knees
and lie idle under haunted bridges.
bouldered bones intertwine
or veins cut along a dotted line
caveat! cries the sayer's sooth,
for he says it scours and devours—
the slinking nightmare sleuth.
the tar is interrupted in carved equinoxes
soak in the crippled toxins
as the air becomes as thick as theophany
and tharm like grease in blood that take me in,
through ash and mud and
all the spider webs caving in
like delicate gorges forges beneath
nightmare sleuth reaching zenith
caveat, silhouettes
stretched out like oil in water
and this silicon tomb can hold me no longer
for i must break out before i am a goner
because it's a mistake that i'll never shake
your face turns opaque
and there was nothing in your eyes
but dripping flesh
wring out all your words for me
your jeers and your juries
but go cling to your crutch
your kings and your qualms
and the church that burns
in its hallow vacancy
for none can resist the urge
that thieves its delinquents from catatonic catacombs
and quagmire junctions
where the swamp will **** you in
and festering sweat sticks like guilt to your skin
and hell is a nightclub where every loss is a life
and heaven's a daydream with your neck to the knife
it needs no rhyme or reason
and every slip of your broken lip
just lose your grip and give in to the treason
would you rather burn at the stake
than suffer your cement heart break
with no reason or rhyme
it's just the weight of the season
backdrop collapse
railroads unfolding
and like a cell storm the train
is coming your way
and slinks away like a nightmare sleuth
it just takes one swipe of the claw
or one bite of the tooth
and it drags you in
feel the sidewalk sleeping
and the blinking lights creeping
above the overpass
and the cold wind reeling--
it'll be your last.
Nov 18, 2012
Nov 18, 2012 at 6:36 PM UTC
You can't safely have a cigarette outside of the bus terminal
without a couple of folk asking for one.
You can't safely have a cigarette in general.
But, if five of them have to last you a night and a sunrise,
you don't really mind turning down a few nameless hands.
Some of the bus drivers like to talk about football, weather;
others complain about management or the patrons;
a few don't say much at all, avoiding sympathy.
They're probably the smart ones.
They don't want to learn the sad stories in between stops.
I usually like to just sit in the back and ride out the best bumps.
The handrails jiggle and crash with every pothole.
-
The men who work at the metal scrap yard
usually get on in front of Debbie's Diner on 22nd street.
Bundled up for warmth and firm of face, they only speak to each other.
Small talk about who almost missed the bus, broken crane joints,
and who moved the most barrels of copper piping fill the blocks.
They tend to pick on the guy who runs the aluminum can crusher;
big guy, they call him "Boose" and he couldn't be much older than I am.
His hands and lips are dry and cracked from exposure,
but his face still shows ember of teenage years, though jilted.
There is a bar that serves three-dollar chili across the street, spicy.
The workers go there when they miss the first bus, have a beer,
down a bowl of boiling chili, and catch the return bus in better moods.
-
The railroads on Brush College road tend to hold up traffic.
The ADM plant doesn't really mind if a few twenty-something mothers
are late to their practical nursing and phlebotomy classes,
but they voice their complaints out of a cracked window to the side
of a ten story soybean silo nonetheless; steaming ears and all.
I stare at the graffiti on the laggard train cars, each unique
in color, quality, style, and message; the industrial Louvre.
These waits sometimes last a half hour or more.
In the days before Pell grant rewards come in,
when students still feel like they're working toward tangible cash,
the seats are all packed with heavy breathers.
The air becomes thick with community college carbon coughs.
Jan 18, 2015
Jan 18, 2015 at 9:23 PM UTC
Walking, always walking,
Puzzled youth being funneled like cattle,
Seek shelter from the sun,
Jeer and poke at each other,
All from the safety of their cell phones.
Constantly seeking that one undesired retention
Of jukebox explosion catapults.
Thrusting us deeper into the mind/brain paradox
What is this?
What are these strange mutterings in the dark?
Babysitting wasp nests by electro shock railroads,
Disgust in the face of the many.
Where is this golden eclipse we’re all waiting for?
How can I not see the spiders on my windowsill?
Are these anguished, infantile youth truly desired?
Aggravated Neanderthal men
Try to impress pulsating goddesses of Light,
All to no prevail.
Sickening feeling in the gut,
Why aren’t you here?
Well I suppose,
Things have changed.
The Empress of the tunnel
Seeks out the empire halls
Of the tunnel-bound angst,
Musicians in the hall strumming
There thoughtless musings,
While the the debutantes watch and listen.
The intensity is unbearable to them,
They must seek shelter in their ipods.
Milk, must have it.
Watching them creep through the cafe,
May they one day find what they’re seeking.
Where are they?
Sitting here by myself,
Look at them jeering at each other
In their own jargons.
Have they seeked out the pleasure of life?
Dream-like meditations,
Well-rounded views of life,
Happiness within.
Dumbly smile at each other,
Seeking closeness,
Mind/body consciousness
Feb 28, 2011
Feb 28, 2011 at 1:05 PM UTC
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman **** and go free to
**** again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
2.2k
THIRTY-TWO Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek.
Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water.
All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks
stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel.
Now they hold their toes and ankles
to the drift of running water.
Then they go to the bunk cars
and eat mulligan and prune sauce,
Smoke one or two pipefuls, look at the stars,
tell ****** stories
About men and women they have known,
countries they have seen,
Railroads they have built-
and then the deep sleep of children.
2.1k
The noise of the night now comforts me. The stove creaks as it cools, jets decend to the airport and the traffics throng wains.
The day unwinds, its events now memories already. Each event, each thought like a train on its own little railroad, disapearing into the depths of the mind. When morning comes a clean slate. Then within seconds the thoughts that dwell, stress and depress, once again tear along the tracks till they overwhelm you. They just circle the mind on little railroads. No journey to speak of.
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 7:45 PM UTC
Mamie beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana
town and dreamed of romance and big things off
somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran.
She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down
where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and
when the newspapers came in on the morning mail
she knew there was a big Chicago far off, where all
the trains ran.
She got tired of the barber shop boys and the post office
chatter and the church gossip and the old pieces the
band played on the Fourth of July and Decoration Day
And sobbed at her fate and beat her head against the
bars and was going to **** herself
When the thought came to her that if she was going to
die she might as well die struggling for a clutch of
romance among the streets of Chicago.
She has a job now at six dollars a week in the basement
of the Boston Store
And even now she beats her head against the bars in the
same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place
the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe
there is
romance
and big things
and real dreams
that never go smash.
1.6k
the depths of your eyes
are swimming with long lost
affection and your heart
heaves and trudges along
the long mangled railroads; all
gently mapped with my
collarbones and
it is beautiful,
our intertwined souls
are beautiful.
Mar 19, 2014
Mar 19, 2014 at 11:22 AM UTC
To the winds of love that carried me on my back,
To the railroads of romance with many a never ending track,
To the sunken feeling I got when I first saw your face,
To the heart that shattered, ended your serene grace.
To the Athena that enlightened me,
To the Zeus that I revered thee,
To the Poseidon I looked at awe,
To the Hades that exposed my flaw.
To the one I loved, now is lost.
To the one I sheltered from the rain that turned frost.
To the one that was the nightingale of my heart,
To the one that was like Da Vinci, my life gone along with my love's art.
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 10:19 AM UTC
If I may presume to summarize the concept,
"Eminent Domain,"
The Big P People own the Right of Way
And the little p people
Have temporary possession of the opportunity
To get out of the Way,
Or to be smashed under the wheels
Of Big P Progress.
Appropriate compensation will be paid,
Of Course,
And living spaces provided
To the little p people,
While the Big P People thunder by on their new highways,
Overpasses, airports, causeways, and thoroughfares.
Reclamation will be done over the torn earth
To re-bury the unearthed little p people's dead,
To restore damaged aquifers,
To "replace" trees and grasses "just as before,"
Never mind the pipelines,
The concrete roadways,
The railroads,
And the power lines....
Eminent Domain...
Rhymes with Capitalist Gain,
And little p people's pain....
Sep 9, 2016
Sep 9, 2016 at 12:18 PM UTC
Sumter, Gettysburg, Sherman's March,
Battles and fights, lives lost
Because of differences along the people.
Aren't people supposed to be different?
We, as a country, are not meant
To agree.
To belong in one room, repeating the same thing.
We will change the words.
Say them in a different order.
And men will die because of those words.
Those exact thought patterns.
Rights and laws are perceived
In different ways,
As well as morality.
When it all began at Sumter, no one died.
It was a statement. A declaration of war.
At Gettysburg, it was a trick. A chilly,
Silly idea. And it was used to make
One of the greatest statements about war
Ever to leave someone's lips. Honoring
The dead and the living. The country and the people.
And the turning point of the fight between brothers.
Sherman's March was a move made by
The union as a mode of total war. Supply lines were cut and
Victory for the north was guaranteed.
Railroads were destroyed, towns were raided, and
Rebels were pushed east.
They had lost.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 8:21 PM UTC
What is a lover, brother?
Other mothers
have tried to define the word
in the most absurd
form.
Reform —
torn
between AK-47 —
streamline railroads point to heaven
in a back alley,
where crossed fingers
pray for lucky number seven.
Chasing paper trails
like Miles Davis
works through manifest scales,
struggling to find
means to define:
what is yours is not mine.
Jazz squeezed a smoke
between sets,
through murmurs of bathroom ***
to the tune of
a show headlined by
the movement,
a movement headlined by
the show.
Marvin to Miles,
Martin to Malcolm,
opposites attract —
that’s how I found them.
Jan 5, 2012
Jan 5, 2012 at 7:55 PM UTC
The bones on bead shells hang on cemeteries,
left behind from the washing tide pushing to the open ocean. I too, left in the bay,
walking railroads and lost in the forest and the trinkling springs
of yesterday's rain.
I've been cleansed, I've been strong.
A mountain man soaring the world on an ancient feather's wind.
Halk feather soaring through infinite vastness.
I've felt deeper things.
Farther than the oceans surface, beyond the green of the cedar.
The smoke, cleansing.
And now,
the silence of the rivers.
Raged and battled, done and fought,
until next Spring.
It is dawning upon me
whether to keep walking this track,
or perhaps this road is empty,
holding nothing.
Old trucks, trees growing from red sawdust of old logging sites,
they too abandoned and left behind
like cabins on desolate mountain tops.
Beaming, vibrant,
for a season or two,
then surrendered to moss and lichen,
going down with rock and stone,
a jar of apple sauce still in place.
Damp, musty rusted iron,
dust on splitting wood.
The grey sky.
Numb on my neck hangs the bones and shell,
stolen from the cemetery.
Am I moving this thing forward or am I falling behind with it?
Forgotten in the breeze and the rush of cattle,
footsteps, as caravans and horses, men, women, echoes, laughter, shadows,
ran from these banks.
Have I become the grit on the gravestone,
my bones ashen and weary as I live this life,
elsewhere moon clouds and sunshine,
drums beat.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For me,
it is the silence,
like a gentle tide
washed my flesh
from the grate
and now I hang in the wind,
like a pale sheet,
flapping slowly
to and fro.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 12:07 AM UTC
Where are the Kerouacs?
The Ginsbergs?
The Cassadys?
Drunk on
wine
and life
Riding the highways and railroads to dreams unseen, even by them.
Clashes of ideas, like bright lights in the dim daybreak of an all-nighters.
Fueled by cigarettes and philosophy.
Now everyone wants the same thing.
A boring spouse.
A boring job.
A boring house.
What happened to the generation of lost souls that once searched the open plains and the cramped alleyways?
For nothing more than a beautiful moment.
Feb 1, 2012
Feb 1, 2012 at 4:17 AM UTC
ash stains and cosmopolatin zines
bathroom savoring night-rain
like lorn and lone trucker tobacco
sky forged in dark blues outside a cracked
window, like you in the closet ****
but the door opened up enough to tell.
1. flesh simpering but the voice a sullen
conversation of silence and broke dreams
television with hundred and forty channels
and half open beer cans.
2. silence still drags kissing and murdered
autumns, shadow of hands over flush skin
lurking moonlight invited.
in morning i'll wake with a human
but tonight you are a god with your hands
roaming my hipbones & sleep with
you, my mind running thoughts
like trains on spinal cord railroads
Jan 22, 2016
Jan 22, 2016 at 2:51 AM UTC
To cope up with poetry, is like crossing on traffic railroads or climbing towering mountains, isn't it? But I chose poems (which only few writes) because I love rhyming and mingling words, and I want to unveil what kind of art I have been hanging on my galleries up to these years.
It is ridiculous, right? When you still wander upon the woods of confusions that you cannot pen your words in a better manner, yet you have already written a lot.
Stirring some cups of coffee of thoughts on my mind, somehow is arduous to do, but I am still so thankful I have best readers like all of you.
Poetry is where I am into. I think in order to write. I write in order to learn.
Sep 8, 2012
Sep 8, 2012 at 7:23 PM UTC
i used to be sad
i used to be sad
all of the time, gnawing at my nails
and bleeding burden in my mouth
as i daydreamed disasters, always
straying from words like "love."
but you taught me that happiness
is not anything that you ask for
when you see happiness,
you seize every crevice and angle and
corner of it, it is yours -
but only if you do not ask for it
you taught me that
there's too many creeps of sunlight
hiding between raindrops
as they fall,
too many open oceans offering
anchors on their beds to pull
us down under,
too many "not enoughs" and
not enough of anything anymore
because everyone is always
asking
you taught me that
if i want to glide along railroads,
i musn't turn into a bullying engine
that shouts and kicks and pushes,
but i must turn into the girl
who knows exactly what
freedom sounds like
and you taught me all of this,
you taught me
everything about love,
without saying a
single
word
Dec 30, 2011
Dec 30, 2011 at 10:55 PM UTC
Constellations of Time
suffocated, deadspace in my neural lapses—
—still, I caught the fly
with my hand.
Constellations of Time—
and I am cowboy in the outer expanses of sanity
faithful cowpoke and Lenape murderer,
native lover, too,
dun American guru
like john wayne defunct.
but when we speak like droogs,
this be:
America: A Detective Story
and I’m the dogged dreams of america:
Humphrey Bogart with his dame Liberty
No, I am Robert Mitchum, too.
Remember Philip Marlowe?
I once was america’s psychosis, and still am.
[I am
the soul who walked above
the soul who walked below;
Constellations of Time—
like gooey cosmic spider webs;
[and I ******* hate spiders]
Fear of Death
…is being stuck, and
fear of that horrible cosmic spider coming home for dinner!
For,
I am
Monsieur Bonaparte’s Hollywood counterpart
who puts the war before the art,
but not the horse before the cart
DEATH
is where my story starts;
railroads,
like the spine of a country and constellations of time
–im on a plain–
ghosts in dust bowl clusters
reflect like
dust particles, like western stars, scattered—
and im on shifting razor planes and who do the math?
Nov 5, 2018
Nov 5, 2018 at 3:49 AM UTC