and i trek'd through the pre-dawn cold
skating along the rail tracks,
to boulder jumping a ravine
                   (where were Japhy's ducks to guide?)
and into a deaden'd grass field.
tapping tip of foot to avoid watery pitfalls
while flanked by rusted railyard
and ****-addled recreational plot;
cat ****'d chemical smell wafts from as
December's north wind fights a toothless perverting force.
the macadame is barren as rainfell desert
and the animals propel by combustion
in effort to scavenge Capitalism's ****
                   predawn
'fore the burliest awaken with hunger.

Seated on the edge of the riverbank
Watching raindrops fall across the city light's reflection;
A living Monet of color and fluidity and the sutble refractions of life.
The bridge above me is humming with traffic,
The railyard to my left fills the cold night with the timeless bellowing of midnight trains,
Used syringes lay amongst the driftwood here.
A crudely painted ******* adorns the trail head,
Overgrown with brambles bushes and blackberry vines.
A solitary ****** cruises the shallow dregs of shore
On an endless quest to find her mate,
Painfully unawares of his fate,
Fallen victim to a poacher,
Some careless fool with a greedy and discontented heart.
The tents and tarps of Portland's homeless, the lost and forgotten, line these hillsides;
Their many dreams and hopes lie broken amidst the rubble of this everyday existence.
I sit here often, smoking and thinking, and watching the ever changing lights.
Every now and again I take a picture, gather a stone, or fall asleep to the sound of rain
And the smell of earth and leaves and rushing water.

Only a fence between the Avon Railyard and my haven:
I lived in her for those good years.
Dark grey blue sides and a white skirt kissing the green weeds,
tugging at her ankles tightly.
New hours, beautifully lit by the light of my television,
were dark, bitter like my fatherʼs coffee,
and sweet as the chocolate milk he mixed for me.
Bowed chords in the treble from rails on wheels of metal,
their songs still steal my breath and remake memories.
I swayed, swooning to sounds of our trains, but
only tunes remain—

A chalkboard; a blank slate.
A place for two emotions:
white and black; love and hate.
the blank space is always black,
but the white-hot love flows over it,
covering the hate with it's purity.

But then technology came, bit by bit,
and then byte by byte, it took over,
recreating our old school chalkboard.

As this change was bound to happen,
so where my single track emotions.
A junction was coming; a railyard is ahead.
I had to change tracks, or I'd end up dead.

And so, I found my two colors,
not despairingly alone any longer.
More colors came into my world,
bursting through my mind's rusted door

Each day, new emotions flow through; red, blue, and green.
They appear like pixels, flowering up onto my blank screen.