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BULLET TRAIN

BULLET TRAIN

You’re a bullet train
cutting through
the morning mist
hurrying to go wherever
you don’t know..
hit one or two on the way.
they didn’t mean
nothin’anyway.
left them on the railroad track
blood all over the place
never looked back..

You’re a bullet train

Editing stage: 

Comments

But if the train took a siding that ended in a dead end everyone on board would die.

An elegant poem with an attack on tunnel vision or a deeper meaning?

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
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Deeper meaning but "tunnel vision" will do :)

author comment

A bit of Rail kill as aposed to Road kill, though there could be a deeper thing there where the train as some things just becomes a part of its whole and nothing else matters.
People can do this , and are oblivious as to what they do to others as long as their goal is reached..
A very deep piece there Joe, Yours Ian.T

A word springs to mind Single-mindedness seems like more than one word yet one aim, LOL

.
There are a million reasons to believe in yourself,
So find more reasons to believe in others..

You nailed it Ian.

author comment

Her aristocratic elbow on the motor lever
sees her old love standing on the verge
of crossing her slender fingers on the horn
button Raised poised like a slender
bird and then away

loves kiss is sweet
and she applys her lipstick to her mouth
in the shadow of the windowglass reflection
"number #86 Siberian Rose"

Your command of language leaves me with awe.

thank you, Steven

author comment

even in my own family "Micheal" younger sportsman carpenter in union
the charming! My sister "Debbie" social animal and
driven (trama nurse RN for years)
Being heard was so important
sometimes invisible is not a good thing
then words were like magic
worlds existed beyond the mind numbing day to day
like a prisoner of a Gaulag watching all the other
prisoners play why couldnt I communicate
why was I so lost in thoughts no one understood me
when I spoke Poetry was always a language
still is I speak mostly

peoples attention span with me is short
so I write short desperate poems like these
and now at this age Most of my life is come
and gone the given anyway
like a crash survivor trying to reach the world
I was escaping from my batteries weak
only so much time for transmission

and I see so much now Feel so much
but the batteries are going
its a strange sensation at times
but beautiful

Ive always loved writers poets
always

and I lived with women and love women
for years they are still some my best freinds
and I can just see that Anna thinking
about beeping that train horn and saying
"Umm not today" and BAM another lover
is gone another shattered heart
nothing like the flavour of twisted irony
its a drug for me even now
even then

I liked this poem
i can see the storyboard art in my head
I can see that old movie
the snow falling
in that scene
the steam train
the lamplights

Thank You Joe!

Didnt realize I forgot..The "Movie" Im talking about is Tolstoys Anna
Tolstoy was an old writer from Russia talking about tragic love
kind of a high brow soap opera for people back then that could read
(Remember back then most people couldnt read much or needed
too nor could afford books and there were not many public librarys
at all Most were private things..One had to pay to read a book one
had to be approved to be let in..)
People love "Twilight" today well back in the sixties this movie was
kind of like this..only it was taken from a time when books main
characters were killed off a lot Death was more common then
and still had its dramatic impact
not like now

Thanks again!

Yes, I remember. Russian novels are as vast and harsh as the wnters of Mother Russia, It is this enrmus landscape ad forbidding winters that instilled a tr agic sense of life" in the Russian collective Soul

author comment

hung out on the rez's here and there
and i met young women and old whom
cut out the hearts of many a man or woman
and stomped on them like an old cigarette
before they saddled up and rode out of
town..In my silent movies the music
is sometimes a lively Tarantala

Im always watching U Tubes of modern docs
on Russia Wolves back in Chernobyl that kind
of thing

Love these lively poems of yours
being crushed in love is no fun
rejection sucks
nothing like going for it though

"tragic sense of life"

great line

being crushed in love is no fun
rejection sucks

Couldn't have said it better than that

author comment

My Children say that just you sit in the quiet, not the quiet of the mind as that would be hard for you to have.
Just sit and ask for your batteries to be charged and the energy will flow from that universal store, then you must remember that you only need a few things switched on at one time so that you energy doesn't drain.
Your poetry and use of history, myths and facts from that memory of yours or your ability to use the tools that you have is so great that you need gaps to think of you in there.
We sometimes drown in our own thoughts that are a stream like unto an angry wash off of winters snow, flooding aimlessly across the path of things that are in the way.
Let the mind be as the river though swollen at the thought of spring, carries it's wealth to the sea in a meandering way that needs little of the things around it.
Have a safe journey there, Young Steve,
Yours Ian.T

.
There are a million reasons to believe in yourself,
So find more reasons to believe in others..

just focus on the precious
switch off the main
a time of Dead Reckoning

the river metaphor is so apt right now
a book I just finished this morning
and now true rest
You see how I keep
on that surge
the current thick

Sit in the quiet

It makes me smile Ian T
thank them for me

and their advice I shall take

Mr Wolf

Ode to Progress............stan

How I wish
I would be so lucky
So as to die
in a road rage
by the hands of one mentally ill
and
see him in jail
for the rest of his life,
for a favour done
then he will no more kill anyone
but relieve me
of all pains of surgery
even the doc would finally kill
yet go Scot free

loved

In "No Exit" Sartre writes that "Hell are the others" [in our life] But, then again, they are our hell if we allow it.

thanks for a comment most of us can relate to.

author comment

I'm just wondering why you repeat the beginning in the end. You do that in most of your poems, Joe. If you haven't made it clear in your poem, repeating it just, imo, detracts from the poem, unless it is a *theme* throughout a lengthier poem such as the one of Bukowski's I just posted.

I ask you to consider why you use that device in your poetry so often.

~A

No, Anna. I started t o think about repetition.I suddenly reallized that I must close the "circle" and let nothing in. Period at the end of a sentence,I do that with most things. Everything must be finished and complete before day's end..

author comment

I guess it is from the old neapolitan songs I used t hear.. Repetition has always seemed to give ""music" to the whole and it is a form used to create a dramatic effect.

This w as a good critique,Anna, and I need to know what works and what doesn't.

joe

author comment

... something of yours I can make a suggestion for. I'm so stoked I'm going to forget what it was.
Anna is right, though hand to heart I didn't realize it until she brought it up. I'm going to go look, but I think it's safe to say you don't repeat your launch at your landing all the time. A fair number of times I'm betting.
I understand what you are seeking in that approach as it is how I see my poetry. Always starting from the tiniest little spot in the Universe, grow to inordinate size and either draw back incrementally or suddenly to the original pin sized start.
Organic? Don't know what one would call it.
One of the tactics I use is something I learned from writing ballades. There are multiple (required) repetitions. In this case, you could add a perfect little adjective in the last verse.

"You're a bloody bullet train."
You're the highly paid professional here, so you'll find a better one, but get my direction? This is what I call an "opportunity". Something in a poem needs to be fixed (repetition), but instead of simply eliminating the repetition, use it as an opportunity to add a positive change to the piece.

Whew. That was a blast.
wesley

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Good point. But why would this be a flaw?

Esker [Steven] understands the "circle' well.

thanks :)

joe

author comment

I haven't been this busy on one of your threads in an age (way back when I still thought I could offer you more than a spell check).
Technically...
it is not a flaw.
I can't be a flaw, because virtually anything written in poetry is correct if it succeeds at expressing the poet's feelings, thoughts, small private itches... scratch that.
The only problem I could ever see in something like this is when it becomes a standard mode of ending one's poems. Then it begins to delve into the negative of repetition, but STILL it cannot be "wrong" if the poet closes virtually each of his poems in the same way if the poet feels it is a viable device to express him/herself. It only becomes repetitious when all of the poet's works are read one after another and deprived (however superficially) of standing on their own.
Of course this conversation of mine is meaningless, but I got to spend some quality time with you.
wesley

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

Yes, I can see what you mean. Very clearly explained. i will need to make sure it does not become a technical cliché

thanks,wes

author comment

dayglow glaze
in throbbing pulse
how she tames the housewife dream
from my petty schemes

a hardcore patent on the pole
rigid and shiny
lurid and lush

she flows with the music
from her glossy hair
and lacquered toes

like a dayglow glaze
in throbbing pulse
how she tames the
dreams from my
petty schemes

....

yah like this back to the beginning
again like a chant
meditation kind of work
the build up the climax
and back to the origin door
again
the landing

I like that

You have been visiting those naughty places again now go and have a cold Shower lol,
Yours Ian.T

.
There are a million reasons to believe in yourself,
So find more reasons to believe in others..

This journey of the Bullet Train has brought out a great talk on many things,
and it is really great that you have been festooned with garlands of words from Steve and others hope you have embraced the talks on these many things this one poem brought out. Go with love young man and have many wonderful days, Yours Ian.T

.
There are a million reasons to believe in yourself,
So find more reasons to believe in others..

I appreciate you all, Ian

author comment
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