Mystery On The Blue Train

 

 

 

 

Mystery On The Blue Train

(a 55)

 

 

There's mystery on the blue train;

Poirot's perplexed

at passion, soft skin, desire.

There's a heart of fire

burning before the snow falls

in the cemetery-silence

that flies behind eyes

in wind that plays

dead jazz in the night

in love slung over the bar

that snaps like crisp hangman's rope

when the body drops.

 

 

 

 

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 linked to dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

 

 

 

 

A 55 for Friday, and the G-Man (Homage to Christie)

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Interior view of a party at Zelli's nightclub, 16 Rue Fontaine, Montmartre, Paris, 1920s Fair Use

First edition cover,Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928  via wikipedia   Fair use, Link

The Great Grey

The Great Grey

I galloped my mare

on the ceiling all night;

summer stirred in her sleep,

stretched and raised warm wide arms

of red roses. Eyes unopened she died

when the wind turned corpse-cold.

I took down the remains

 with food and blankets to the child

 in his cell. I fought when the keepers

ate it all while he cried, mouths full of

carrot, April and wool. My key cracked

 in the lock. They beat me with laughter.

I watched two moons scrubbed out

by steelwool clouds, scratching paled

 porcelain sky as they streamed by,

chained in a train of tarnished

silver cars rattling out their freight

of snow-melt on my face.

No jumping that train, no escape

on the rails, no escape on

my mare, no summer, no saving,

only this waving grey

where colors are graving.

April 2020

 posted for Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

Play it Again Day 16 Remains

and for earthweal's
Open Link

Images: Horsewoman On A Red Horse, © Marc Chagall   Fair Use

November First © Andrew Wyeth   Fair Use

Accidental

Train Wreck Point, by jack_a_daniel

Accidental

I was an accident.

I  happened one day

and people just had

to learn to live with it.

There was no malice involved,

only cause and effect

as an object on one course

must meet what opposes it

in a collision that breaks each one.

The age that's come

is another accident. I was

never meant  to live

so long, past the point

where rails can go, to

grow clouds in my eyes

and traps in my bones, be the last lost

in the long gone past. This is all

an accident.

And when I brushed

your hip with mine

in the crowded smoke,

when you stumbled and grabbed

my shoulder---what a trainwreck

started there! How the lives piled up,
derailed, crumpled as the force

pushing them met that stone wall kiss--

The screams! The wreckage! And the acts

of bravery

as heroically we pulled

the newly shattered

from the broken twist,

set their bones and tried

to make the crippled dance again,

but things can never be

quite the same

after an accident.

~December 2013

jill carlson, on flick'r

posted for     real toads
Weekend Challenge:The World's End
Marian of runaway sentence gives us our mission: 
"Our writing exercise today is this: What would it be like if we were stuck in (or have regressed to) the past?

I have no problem going there. It's leaving that's hard.


Optional Musical Accompaniment

Photos shared from flick'r, under a Creative Commons License

Far

Far

So far, so far your heart

so deep, so deep the dark

so far the star

traveling on the bullet train new age

music of the rails still a harpy's song

rattling out each harmonic dissonance

that parts us, incessant glissando

clack and clamor of canned confusion

ricocheting off unmalleable ore drawling

the angle acuter, the fundamental ever 
smaller parallel to a paper point of no return 

and none desired. Beneath, just a small

click and the engine shoots itself

down an altered course toward

a receding destination halfbent as

the bow that launches the arrow

of an indifferent archer

physical skills to punch it home

never there and now

no different as it veers hopelessly far

from the tracks after what runs faster

than any train can catch, thinner than any

arrow can pin, feet fluid as a deer

jumping the rails and flickering fences,

dry rivers future and past, heading for the green

deep heart of the woods where it feels safe

where its thicketed death is hiding.

so far so far your heart
so deep, so deep the dark

so far, so deep, so dark the star

March 2012

Posted for    real toads

Laurie's challenge: Perspective

Image: So Far, March, 2012 © joy ann jones

Train of Fools

Train of Fools

All

aboard the

train of fools

every car a loaded die

every porter's got the snake eye
avoids your hand clamp

pallor, skin damp

jacket too tight

rackety clatter
through the night

smoking car reflex dome

an iron sight takes the range

on your home

where 
it's strange

connection 
and sensation

are 
mutually exclusive states
distinct fates

(Can you live in San Berdoo 
and Peru ?)

(O

no)

Traps within traps

hot breath 
of the engine claps

chuffing hot coal scale

(or the  sweet exhale

of murmured praise  
so strong

so hot so soft so sweet)
land on your feet

You want a raise?

Put some 

juice

in 
the 
caboose.

Which is it 
you think you’re

here for, babe

the work

or the pay?

October 2011

Optional musical accompaniment(and props for title)

Or, alternatively:




thank god he doesn't try to dance in this video...

Image: Train in the Snow, Claude Monet, 1875 Oil on canvas

via wikmedia commons

Mystery Train

Mystery Train

Montana twilight

train whistle a devil’s lovesong

in the pines, shaking out drowsy owls. 

Fiery hooves ratcheting on the steel rails

clatter against the mountain calm.

Montana boy

distant eyes windowed glacier blue

sun's leather on your  brown cheeks

quiet hands, wild tongue of blarney

dancing your waysong in the deep woods

fey in the campfire light stroking my 

borrowed guitar, gifts given lost or kept

your misfortune my mystery

train ticket in a denim pocket 

pressed flat between us.

You thought you could talk anyone

into anything, meeting your folks on the blue
beyond ranch. City girl, braided gypsy,

I was a sprite, a freak, only your
hallucination there.

So we had a beer at the depressingly

real train station, waiting for John Wayne

with the devil arriving at 12:18. 

Time was overcranked. I remember you 

lifted my heavy barglass, turned it

to drink where my lips

had been, goodbye chipped silver

in the fogged antique mirrors. 
The San Francisco train
took your letters back.

Miles of dust 
down a switched track,

the devil still pulls Montana's whisper

lullaby low in the valley,

train howling to a stroked guitar.

September 2011

Posted for    Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

 Optional Musical Accompaniment: Mystery Train by Junior Parker and Sam Phillips, performed by Paul Butterfield and The Band