Sunday 20 November 2011

Trains of thought

Whatever it is you're looking for you won't find it here.
- Raymond Pettibon


Ray's trains of thought
Begin in Oklahoma

One place I've never been
Except in sleep.

To shut your eyes is
Like to travel.

His trains of thought
Have worn the tracks

Where they roar through many
An idle or curious mind.

And out the other side.

But now Ray's iron chariot

Has steamed into
This walking library:

A poet drunk on ink
And HB pencils

Pockets stuffed with papers clipped

Scraps with phrases underlined

Linguistic chaff
And leitmotifs

Homologies
And old delirium.

"Pages
that hold the truth
are blank!"

Ray clips my ticket

It leaves me waiting.

_____
gw2011/


4 comments:

  1. Pat and John, thank you both!

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  2. Theoretically my next post should be a blank page as I wait for the Pettibon train of thought to move off along whatever lines. But inspired by that idea I soon found an almost empty page. An almost deserted beach. The haiku fits to the concluding line of the poem Trains of Thoughts in a kind of Beckett way in that we will inevitably find ways to amuse ourselves so to speak in the waiting room of our existence.

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