Boxcar graffiti travels from town to town
It's the eye candy of someone handy, sown
In the sunshine or the rain
It travels on on the train
To all passersby it is known
Nothing short of a museum display
Nothing short of a Fairey
The colors dance
The colors romance
For all who have come out today
We've see your art in different ways
I heeded the message that it portrays
Not to be out done
It's etched for everyone
I've got my lawn chair out to save my place
When I hear that whistle blow
I look outside my window
There for me to see
The glamorous artistry
It's time to start the show
So when it comes into view
It is time to imbue
Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall
Palate, paint pen or aerosol
A boxcar reserved for me and you
Then the eerie sound sight
Of a train whistle at night
Gets my mind rolling
Memories start patrolling
I'll live forever in my minds flight
Way back in 1983,
when I was just twenty-four you see,
very early in my career,
young, naïve, somewhat cavalier,
I wanted to buy a brand-new car,
something sporty, not some "boxcar".
Of course I had the money, the "dinero",
so I went out and bought a Chevy Camaro.
It was a 1983 Sport Coupe -
rather appropriate for my age group.
The color was diablo red,
and lemme tell ya! It sure turned heads!
Everywhere I went, that car got attention
and I won't deny it gave me an air of pretension.
Looking back, I suppose I was young and foolish
thinking that the car made me look coolish,
but that car was dependable
and took me where I needed to go,
whether on winding roads
or on the straight and narrow.
Now I have a treasury of memories:
its sounds, touches, and sights as well;
I still can remember that new-car smell.
Your first car is something you fondly remember,
forgetting the flaws, looking back on its splendor.
As I try to wish away, all the sadness that I feel;
As if a night sky's falling star, could grant me something real...
If only one small wish, of what's eluded me all this life thus far;
I'd wish for just some happiness, just a little in a jar;
So I could open as I needed, unload some sadness that I feel
Much like unloading bulky freight,
From a trains overloaded boxcar...
If only I could wish away, all the sadness that I feel,
I'd finish this life with certainty
And a soul full of new found zeal...
Nail walking down the street
Carrying a bagful to fix something
For the master who owns my dreaming
Storefronts lolling sidewalks asleep
Night quiet jazz, Erie, PA
The endless road breaking cartons
Locked doors being kidnapped jumping
fences getting spotted running away
Dreaming snatches of words in the air
Fine milky jazz boots on a roll a train
That passes at 10 a,m, cars with their vapor
Mist the chuga-chuga sound of a boxcar to
No-where the rattling of walls when you are
Alone hot tea Lorrianne in a skirt a poetry
Reading in N.Y. moving out with only the
Shirt on my back going down,back,out, taking
Chris to the mermaid bar covered in sand, no shoes
Living nearby close to the sea, changing
Having enough cool to chill sand enough to scratch
That you never itch life that you're full
Digging the Diz and jack going, back going, back going
Because you want to/needing nothing' nothing but a little
Taste now and again just being free doing it instead of it
doing you
The Eastern window is open
and early morning birds sounds
invade the room.
Drawn blinds are no defense
as one after the other
the inevitable rays of light
sneak in around each shimmering slat.
At 5 o'clock.
The sun hangs like a red ball
in the middle of the white horizon,
a flaming standard.
The steam clings softly to the
bathroom mirror and like misty,
glorified remembrances masks
the true man's reality.
At 6 o'clock.
A breeze brushes the wind chime
hanging by the kitchen window,
a tiny cry.
The slant of the August sun
is already painful to my eyes
and tears make short trips down
the side of a breakfast glass.
At 7 o'clock.
Across the street, a dry field
plays home to a waiting boxcar.
My gaze drops down.
Hot water burns the face
of the egg-covered plates
as the softened yolks
slide off like skin...
8:15 and 32 seconds.
Where are the songs of yesterday?
I hear the echoing screams.
Turn off the air conditioning.
Sit down in the halls.
It's not over until the last
Fat Man falls.
This day,
I feel the metal rails shiver,
hear a distant loco coming,
bound upon its fixed route.
I move on,
enter the scattered brush,
no need to turn around
to look at those many
freight containers rumbling by.
This day
I'm on a pathless journey,
my boxcar is empty, my cargo light.
The world crosses over me,
moves on.
Moving on into the night
I struggle with ideas,
Trying in desperation to fit words
To a subject I don't even understand
A train sounds its horn
A sound born of forlorn lament
A cry shorn of language
Torn between anguish and mourning
Research work
Rattling across my inner landscape
Paraphrase paraphrase paraphrase
Mindless conglomeration
(The third line of the third verse is an echo of Charles Bukowski's line "boxcar boxcar boxcar" in the poem Boxcar)
A train went by in the distance
and I could hear it passing
every few hours or so from the back
bedroom of my grandfather’s house
My room, when mom came home
after she and dad derailed, but the
train out back was always certain to its track....
no burden that I needed to understand.
My room, and commuter’s haven in college,
and mom felt so much better
with me moved back in the house
in case the old man fell.
And when she fell first,
the spill shut down the town
and the Train roared into that long
awake night out in the back.
Still my room when I moved away
with the years, and understood
that home is more of a time
than a place, both slipped
beyond the great reclaim. You
were there once, and I’m sure
the train went by that night but
neither one of us heard the roll.
Years later, my sister and I sold
the house, and I slept the closing
eve in that room out back
the farewell caravan
pealing on by the foot board--
moving on with the moving on,
it’s boxcar back always open
to the hobo---up for a jump.
Bowlegged belligerent bellowing Boxcar Betty
Rarely rose to the ripe, refreshed or ready
She always had an exasperatingly idiotic excuse
To cavort and converse on Charlie’s Chicken caboose
Eddie’s Enthusiastic Engine was trite and tired.
Of these two freeloaders, quarrelsomely quagmire.
He wanted both Betty and Charlie off his train.
For they both were a challenge, and a horrible strain.
Boxcar Betty dug in her claws, determined to stay.
She loved riding the rails with Charlie every day.
Eddie had to keep Charlie Chicken too of course.
A train’s caboose is imperative as legs on a horse.
Lost in a card game
that others would pass
I feel the time slowing
while covering fast
A dim all-night roadhouse
blue plate of regret
whose neon but flickers
my hunger to bet
A pot full of memory
has come unannounced
with bare knuckled waging
I raise every doubt
But the road’s calling silent
its direction unclear
my thumb pointing inward
to ante the fear
The odds long but taken
to gamble and run
my fortune extended
and past rebegun
A graveyard sits lonely
on the side of a hill
awaiting those fated
last dealer to kill
A light in the distance…
the ‘Omaha Gate’
it’s twelve minutes early
tomorrow is late
Asleep in the boxcar
alone with myself
the questions keep playing
—one ace left undealt
(Sinking Springs Diner: December, 2021)
. for public domain
Let them feel the love that they don't feel
in a boxcar on a train.
Take their hands unsteady as they are.
Let them feel welcome home.
All they've seen is caravans and roads,
so many people on their way,
runnin' scared, their children in their arms,
nowhere safe to pass the night.
So let us please open up a door.
Take them in. It's only right.
Don't say, "Lord, your life was all in vain,"
this year's only Christmas night.
Ashes to Ashes
Smoke
rises in the distance.
The boxcar
rocks,
rocks,
rocks;
stones
are placed along the ties.
Were they placed by Chance
or left
as gently as Kaddish.
I lift my hands in the darkness;
the light of the knothole
lights the tips of my fingers like Shabbat candles,
and I cover my eyes.
I can smell them,
the names
put in the furnace.
Silence screams out of the smoke stacks
as vowels burn away
as consonants try to escape the fire, flee
up the concrete throat and out
into the sky
escaping the camp disguised in grey coats of ash,
at last,
as winter covers the mirrors
of the lakes with ice.
Contest: Last Train to Auschwitz
Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann
Behind on my rent…
the door slamming behind
A beggar of memories,
doomed to remind
Last boxcar of hope
on a railway of dreams
From here to tomorrow
—trapped in between
(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2020)
At the end of this dark alley
Under the streetlamp, on a boxcar
My graffiti screams
"This is MY territory"!
I've made my mark
In this concrete hell
See my soul
Exploding on this wall
Vibrant urban colors of expression
Shouting without words
You cannot
Silence me
Cityscape Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Julia Ward
1/28/20
I tried to sleep, but the trip is long
Now far from home where things went so wrong
This whole train now I call mine
My boxcar upon the line
Bottle of wine, a cork and a song
11-22-19
Contest: Five Word Challenge
Sponsor: Beth Evans
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