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Jae Hyun Jul 2015
i’ve lived along the wrong
traintracks,
half a chromosome off
from the abandoned ivy
school i would have
attended, had i been
led by what i’ve been
looking for.
nobody really knows me here.
it takes a special type of person
to read the tea leaves in
the bottom of the mug I
leave to dry.
and this still stands:
i don’t know how to share the air still
trapped in my lungs.
because air doesn’t mean much
if it is not being swallowed as a
last chance.
and i know i’ll be able
to leave isolation behind
and write a poem to
live in
Felicia C Jul 2014
Speaking of the kids in my hometown

we used to walk the traintracks obsessively

like they’d lead us somewhere

like they’d show us something

like the end of the summer was just a bookend parallel line with the river by the library card that promised if i only read enough books i could get out of there and over the moon.

just parallel lines, but they made as much sense as any other way out.

And the gazebo where the high school band played

and I swung on my first date
June 2012
Felicia C Jul 2014
I write too many poems about my body.

but it’s the only house my spirit knows

and the only movement is my own

I could write you a love poem

or one about the way the kids in my hometown

used to walk the traintracks like they led somewhere

but i’m completely obsessed with this idea of entrapment

that i could be more than skin and bones that i could be made of

ink blotch shoulderblades

ribbon ribcages

clothespin wrists

and ruby lips

that i could abandon myself and get out of this cage

that’s too big or too small or whatever the **** they tell me this week.
June 2012
A pounding
seizures and nausea
violence, fountains of cascading
mankind's bleeding, gushing
puncture wounds of wine
Dreamkillers out of their way to wreak
smoldering, rancid havoc
Epilepsy and ******* muscles spasms
Brain-tissue scarring from the rocking
between heavenhell and deathlife
Give me your soul and I'll
twist it into strands with which I
hang myself and make a tourniquet around your
neck
Dancing or slaying be one
I **** and lascerate the remnants of my
skin, my soul stretched across the
traintracks, waiting for pleasure
pleasurepleasure in gore and flesh
and wriggling maggots in the eyesockets
of children
Too bad
we all have to wake up come down
inandout of this horrific flying breathing fantasy
rapture of adulterated movement
Sin in all its glory licks the black flames
ashestoashes and dust into mud
blud across the vacuum
Thomas EG Dec 2015
I notice the symmetry in your face
You look in every direction but mine
We rush and crash through the night
Across traintracks, through tunnels

I admire the strong structures
Glowing beneath these festive lights
You are hiding insecurities behind
A temporary mask of excitement

Could-have-been tragedies
Become appreciative victories
We are mere trembling bodies
Amongst a crowd of confidence

Relief pours over us, flowing fast
Reducing our uncertainties
Reusing forgotten identities
Recycling mistreated potential

Relaxing, finally in tact...
03/12/15
Boaz Priestly Jun 2016
i know that
most days
the cathedral of your body
with all its dips and curves
forgotten staircases
and ripped velvet covers
on the splintered pews
is hard to love

and there are days
where you wish that your
body would have manifested itself
as a palace
made of ivory and bone
with great empty halls
that would host nothing else
but your anguished cries
and empty stomach

but these things
are incapable of filling you up
because it is hard to sustain yourself
on bitterness and past scars alone

so i say to you
my friends
brothers and sisters
my lovers
and those living in the wastelands
of themselves

cast aside these
things for you are not a church
or a palace or a temple

no
you are something
much stronger and vast
grow yourself into a forest

turn all the sleepless nights
and breakdowns and hospital visits
and suicide attempts
and those traintracks of scars
into the great twisting trunks of trees

grow yourself as big and bold
as you need to be
protect yourself
wrap up all your sharp and soft
edges and corners
into the bark of mother nature

become a forest
because
through fire and drought and storm
and flood
the forest always comes back
even the charred remains of trees
stand strong

so
i say to you
with your dark circles
and long sleeves
and chest hidden behind a binder
with all your scars
and imperfections
be a forest
because
a forest is unstoppable
it always comes back
it always grows back

and so will you
Amethyst Nov 2016
I was fifteen when you were sixteen, I knew you were trouble and that's what I liked about you.
My mother would hate it.. but we always got away with doing bad things.
Sneaking alcohol and stumbling down traintracks.
Tell me why I couldn't know you now? You don't exist in my world anymore.. your cashmere skin and eyes the color of some burnt thing. But yet so alive.
We would ride around in your mother's car, smoking *** like we shouldn't be..
Out after midnight like we shouldn't be...
having ***.. like we shouldn't be.
But we didn't care because as long as it feels right, do it, eh?
And oh did it feel right. I think you'll always be a memory to me.
One of the best memories.
The only memory I need, the only memory I have of you is warm summer thunderstorms and mischief. What did we know?
We were only in tenth grade... but like my mother says,
"you think you have it all figured out".


Maybe we did.
come back to me.....
Mel Holmes Feb 2012
up the water hole


Ledbetters:
the waterfall which we yearned to
explore on our days
off. like a fresh romance, we wanted to know
each rock on her body and how it got there.
the raft guides and myself,
the master of whitewater reservations, most days
working (trapped) in an old stone house
grabbing phones, calls from pockets-full-of-cash families, boy scouts,  
seeking gorge thrills on full days of
sun and moody thunderstorms.

Ledbetters:
she sits down the railroad tracks which ran
through our cabin homes (and my little shack-barn)
traintracks that kept running next to its river friend, heading into
the town as a timid tourist train jaunt.

we’d creep on top of the rails, while sparrows sang their high-pitched
refrains, river rafters’ shrieks faded,
(i’d pretend not to hear the rattlesnake’s jingle).
the sun beat down ******* our shoulders,
but stopped its punches when we snuck off the tracks,
onto the trail, into the woods.
(then, the spots of sun shone only where trees told them to)

down the path,
past the wooden bridge where we played Pooh Sticks,
past the old campfire spots, the towers of rocks we crafted so carefully,
to get to Ledbetter’s legs: her huge rocks, the heavy flow of water, her blood.

i always slipped and fell as i jumped from rock to rock,
up and over cliffed streams. higher and higher we would climb,
until we reached her narrow water hole:
Birth Canal.

i’ve been afraid to climb up Birth Canal—
shimmy up and clench its slippery rocks with gravity’s water
working against me. i’m almost certain she would wash me away,
i’d tumble down all her rocks, crack my skull on wet rock,
more of a Death Canal.
when you can overcome your mind,
are you truly reborn?
Chloe Apr 2015
10.
You're in the clattered traintracks
And the static on my phone
I know you've found your heaven
But you're always welcome home
writing doodles
Something that stopped me in my tracks
was the weight of the air around me.
we're all sitting in traintracks on a baseball field
and we dont see the cars driving past
but we can **** well feel them
the balloon of pressure
air sprinting away from the grill of a two-ton hunk of metal
glass
rubber
knocks you back just in time to get hit by the train you never saw coming.
jump off the tracks and dive into my opened chest
the sea is swelling and it will swallow you whole
You're just standin there.
You look stupid.
Wonderin' why..
Why, man?
be the tide and raise these storm waters until they crash your levies
leveling your time-built empire
your stockades made of billiard *****.
lionness Dec 2015
i awake blanketed by the morning sun and
the celestial frost that lingers on from
the night. the sound of laughter jolts me.

i watch the couple walk leisurely along
the side of the traintracks. "Hi!" the
woman says behind stale eyes and
wispy blonde curls. she stiffles her
laughter until it bellows out like
a warrior cry.

i can hear the harshness
in the words she speaks of me to
her lover, they grow more distant
as they escape my view.

i can smell the sweat of the lost
souls who found themselves here
before me.


i can taste the saltiness of the tears
that slide down the contours of my
face; an emotionless, knee-****
reaction.

however, i feel
nothing. there
is no despair
left in me. no
more hatred.
not even
sadness.

i feel only
the bitter
cold of the
concrete bridge
beneath
the weight
of my resting
body.

i feel only
the hunger
that aches
in the core
of my being.

i feel only
the rattling
of the train cars
passing , only
the rumbling of
the morning traffic
on the highway above
all of which
are lulling me back
to sleep
Addison René Sep 2014
my words are going to hit you.
so hard,
you forget your first name.
the paintings etched on your skin
will now be our story
and i want your
cigarette-stained fingertips
to burn holes into
my skin -
set me on fire.
my words are going to stay with you
while you're not
holding your breath
on bridges,
tunnels,
elevators,
traintracks...
and while my face would be turning blue,
with lack of oxygen.
my words are
so precisely
and concisely
constructed into sentences,
that are never spoken,
never whispered,
uttered,
or murmured;
but they are written down
for you to read.
so please -
touch my face
tell me you love me
then *set me on fire.
literally an example of stream of consciousness
Jenn Yeo Jun 2015
And if I were to die, what would it mean?
If I crashed in a car or was carried out to sea
I know others who've passed and I wish I was in their place
Because they are the ones needed to stay
So if I was to die, what would it mean?
If I laid on the traintracks or was left to bleed
I know others who struggle but let me go first
If you were die the pain would be worse
What if I was to die, what would it mean?
If I swallowed pills or didn't wake up from my dreams
I know others who grieve but with me its be relief
So what would it mean if it would mean anything
Ken Pepiton Feb 2022
Instant-
Live- five minutes later,
from the gitgo

we got this gizmo
makes us, make shifts up, allowing
-split axle- right, that's what did it,
signal
all the wheels in wheels in wheels
from where the tire touches dirt,
to where the driver feels the pull,
to spin with gravity boost,
allowing if to call, if
we made the turn,
due to the berm, beyond the line,
the traintracks lean in and let go
oh.

Not many ever tried.
finished Anghus Fletcher's Wonderworks, well worth the listen again.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2021
every time i walk up to the Thames
at Coldharbour...
and i meet this aghast
consummate volume of
murk, water...

every time i walk up to the Thames:
that's the "thing"
with walking... there's so much
"there"...
        
the snail's-apprentice...

every time i walk up to the Thames
at Coldharbour...
i have this... wild sparkle
leftover in my eye
greasing me up for more...

every time i walk up to the Thames
at Coldharbour
past the Rainham village
via the traintracks
via the marshes...

  i get this wild idea of...
  taking my clothes off...
stripping bare: to a minimum
of agitated limbs...
& goosebumps...
and swimming to the south-shore...

every time i write something
in english...
i want to make an emphasis
in deutsche...

verrücktluft: air pre an embodiment
of mond...

Einrich von stubble und
ein fünf
          eine fünf
tongue-breaking (zungebrechen)
von die vierte ***** etc.
           a pause
  with: a(n) applause, case, to... boot...

halving: what's for the ******?
i have to Atlas pose
what's to be inherited from
the 20th century because:
at that sort of short-lived
prior to a nadir...

no, no there's no entertaining
closures of this 'ort...
phlegm and proverbs cosmopolitan...
jews jews everywhere...
but not an Israeli to fathom
a bothersome "it" with...

        perfected Danzig
cosmopolitan jeder-deutsche for: kichert...
life along the aorta:
this "sacred" city...

by CH an X is implied...
                      halving a caron:
because pronoun ich...
could be... isch... dogs are barking
it's past 2am and...
whipping... lashing... Zeros X
come CH Xaron etc.
                 Blah Babble a Loan...

every time i walk up to the Thames
at Coldharbour...
i think about taking off my clothes
and swimming across
this grandiosity of...
it's beside me pretending it's
the Vistula... an artery of a nation...

London alone...
to the south-shore...
a wild idea... by tomorrow...
it's long long past "gone".

— The End —