So I went down to Truman State U in Missouri on the Southwestern Chief. How can you not like a train called that! Met a lot of great people, hung out with my notorious old pal Mark Spitzer and his rock and roll wifey, Robin. Sold many books. Visited with Rush Limbaugh's relatives. And, on the way back, proving once again that life is richer than you'd expect, I rode the train with a group of Kazakh musicians! My new pal Artyom Romanov, the Jim Morrison of Khazakstan! His lovely pal, the pianist Lena, wanted to stay in the beautiful USA. "Are you married?" she asked. The train snack bar guy offered to marry her so she could stay. I love trains. So, I was feeling arty and alive on the way down and I did some writing sketches--and here they are.

___________________________________________________________________________________
Holy Week Train Time....


Train station.
Hot clouds.
Prairie wind.

Going to La Plata.
Or
as they say it--
La Play-Tah.
Or
La Plate-Ah.

Smooth soft clicks
almost silent
behind buildings
out
pond
after
pond

after



pond.


#

Suburban train yards
beyond the last road
I know--

creek

between rails and
railyard

alive

with boxes
bottles
oil cans.

#

Wrecking yard.

Cars laid on top layer--
hoods wide open to the sun.

Iron alligators.

#

300 school buses
graze beside
scattered trailers
like orange
aurochs.

#

Cop has a picnic
beside a river.

#

East side: piles
of industrial rust/machines.
West side: 1,000
acres of farms,
ground still
in gray slumber.
Two boys on Stingray bikes
in wedges of dust
race the train.

#

One tiny Christmas tree
grows
beside a huge power tower,
touching.

#

Guys in nylon workout pants
go by to the club car
like this: vweep
vweep vweep.

#

Riding the horn
through every small town
intersection.
Thirteen streets
in a row:
only one
minivan.

Mom inside,
watching.

#

All over Illinois--
forsythia
gone insane!

#

Dead ditches:

streams of dirt

irrigate fields of dust.

#

One tractor

raising clouds of dust

like smoke from a freighter

is the only lonesome

traffic jam in

100

miles.

#

Shock. Close my eyes
on an empty field.
Open my eyes
on a giant warehouse.
Magic.

#

Mendota, Illinois
train station in a rail museum.
For the moments
we're stopped, we become
another display.

#

Sleeping steam locomotive
will our horn
wake you?

#

How
the
hell
did
they
get
two
Mexicans
in
Mendota
?

#

Pretty woman two rows back
eats potato chips
so loud the whole car
is listening.

First cows of the day--
they eat grass, and she
provides the soundtrack.

Karuncha krinch, karunchee krunk.

#

Gary Numan on the iPod.
Here in my train
I feel safest of all.

#

Haichoochoo: A Railway of Seeing.

#

22 vending machines
in a dirt lot. I'd like
to see the tractor
that harvests them.

#

10 mile road
straight as light
right there throwing sparks
a single truck.

#

Wrecked Corvette
beside a barn
somehow looks
embarrassed.

#

Now she's eating a sandwich, but Black
Sabbath is drowning out her mandibles.

#

Trains sneak behind
and look up the skirts
of every town.

#

That farmer
in that tractor
been plowing
for 12 hours--
what
is he dreaming?

#

For miles now
the only thing driving
that road is sunlight.

#

Empty foundations
and old snaggletrees
around them: dreams
bulldozed--voices
lost in the grass.

#

Giant inflated rabbit!

#

Horse
actually
stops eating
watches
the train.

#

Who put that picnic table there?

#

We slow, we crawl. No bird
in the sky. Setting sun
picks out every blade
of grass and lends it
glory.

#

Long curve.

The end
sees the beginning.

Train rides
connected to its
shadow.

#

5 women
go to the lounge car,
each of them 20
years older than the one before:
they look
like time-lapse
photography.

#

Perfect prairie degradation:
a black bog winds through a junkyard
where dead trees are scattered
among wrecked trailers.
I want to write
that book.

#

Remembering how my mother
loved bare trees.

Wondering what trees
she's seeing where she is now.

#

The last 3 tractors
have been stopped in fields
& the drivers slack
or slumped, arms
hanging.
Everybody's
dead.

#

The face
reflected in the window glass,
50 years old. The heart
looking out through it
is 7.

#

The Mississippi. Turbulent and ancient. Makes me smile.
Like the Rockies. My old friends.
The river and the peaks:
America.

#

Refinery across the big pond
looks like a vast oil tanker
somehow sailed across the farmland.
Like a devil ship
in some troubled dream.

#

Trough 1,000,000 trees
setting sun sees itself
in the swamp.

#

Toilet paper
in the trees
like egrets.

#

In the hills of Iowa.
Long pale dirt roads cut through the woods.
They go straight to the shadows in my dreams.

I live back there.

I have lit a fire.

I have a rocking chair.

I still use a typewriter there.

The door is never locked.

Come find me.

#

A long plume of smoke
rises from the exact spot on the horizon
where the sun has set.

All the world's
aflame.

# posted by Luis @ 5:52 PM