Short Boxcars Poems

my locomotive
pulls you with

you at the end
a red caboose

steamingly
blowing my

whistle...

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How did this happen?
Only a year ago...
Laughing, loving, living.  Sudden
Occupation by men with evil intent.
Cast into boxcars like animals. 
Assaulted and beaten by soldiers.
Unable to stand, to move, to  think.
Selection.
Time ends....

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Once lit by flickering torch light 
with animal tallow mixed with ocher
daubed on subterranean rock walls
now lit by streetlights or LED headlamp
slashes of spray paint and magic markers 
splattered on concrete bridge abutments,
boxcars, or walls of tenement ghettos,
but the message is the same
we were here....

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Do you feel alone, 
like you were better off dead
the battlefield in your head.
A no flyover zone.

Do you feel ashamed, 
the bitterness to blame
I can't be held accountable 
for I am not the same.

Emotion builds upon itself 
like boxcars on a train.
A station-less existence, 
I try to call your name, 
I try to call your name....

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Shoes
Thousands of them
Old and shriveled up like prunes
Worn leather with no luster

Shoes
Walked in by men
Men of the past who died in a scream
One loud scream
One deafening sound
An echo felt from inside my soul

Chains and memoirs
Boxcars and stolen treasures
Today I leave this museum believing I am a Jew.

10-13-17
gwendolen song...

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wearisome is the ardent wine, 
icy corridors
we sooty birds descend nimbly into nests
high in drear corridors, collecting leafy glisten

among the psychotic-seeming industry
and throng of souls' bitter rinds.
i, tunneled roots, blackened bark clinging
feebly peel away, reveals then
what teething bishops sung.

a petty triumph of marrow... boxcars and
 boxcars clangin' fertile to the 
fallen ladders...

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