Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Incarpaliar rock


Incarpaliar rock

The train cheats through the desert.
My elbow is warmed from its resting on the window.
What a fuss I left behind!
That singing brick, making music to soothe the papoose.

I might as well have a sandwich – so-called –
though the railway doesn’t know what a sandwich is.
Why can’t I sleep on trains?
That would stop me feeling hungry.

It’s worse on a plane – the cramped carpal tunnel.
It’s like your dreams are cheated when you try and sleep
on a plane.
On trains, I doze....

A train has rhythm  - (rhythm,
what a stinker of a word to spell).  Rhythm.  Rhythm.
On trains the rocking motion reminds you of being a papoose
listening to your mother’s music,
warmed up from inside out by her oh-so-familiar voice.

Not the voice that later would say, Get it? Get it??
when plainly I didn’t. 
As though she’d seen what sort of a fool she’d brought up.
What a fuss she’d make over it.

No wonder I’m dreaming of being on a train,
streaming through the desert.
cheating her, somehow. 


This poem, (not autobiographical, by the way), is the result of working out one of the exercises in The Exercise Book, edited by Bill Manhire and others. 

2 comments:

Kay Cooke said...

A good poem Mike! Really like it. It has a chatty tone, a nice 'rhythm' and surprising ideas and images. Definitely should remain as one poem not made into two; that way it will keep its fascination

Mike Crowl said...

Thanks, Kay...I've been away in Sydney, so just catching up on emails and such. It wasn't this poem that I was wondering about needing to be two...this one is definitely of a piece! (The other one was Montezuma's Revenge..)