Request

[graveyardgrin.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'd like to ask for poems which have the mention of tracks in them. Train tracks, animal tracks, tear tracks- anything is fine.

edit: I'm also looking for poems for misfits, for people who feel that they don't belong.

I'm sorry for not posting a poem because this is actually the prompt for an essay that I have to hand up soon, but I have no inspiration at all :( Thank you so much in advance for any help, and I promise I'll contribute to the community as soon as I can find something that's not on here already.

Comments

[tealight-rookie.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, I just posted this in my own blog yesterday. It's from Don Paterson's 'spiritual portrait' of Spanish poet Antonio Machado, The Eyes.

Road
Don Paterson

Traveller, your footprints are
the only path, the only track:
wayfarer, there is no way,
there is no map or Northern star,
just a blank page and a starless dark;
and should you turn around to admire
the distance that you've made today
the road will billow into dust.
No way on and no way back,
there is no way, my comrade: trust
your own quick step, the end's delay,
the vanished trail of your own wake,
wayfarer, sea-walker, Christ.

[graveyardgrin.livejournal.com]

I like this. thank you :)

[teithiwr.livejournal.com]

This one is quite lovely.

[decollete.livejournal.com]

The Machado poem that probably inspired this one (http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Proverbios_y_cantares_(Campos_de_Castilla)) might also be worth a look. It's the 24th section from a larger work called Proverbios y Cantares, but it's pretty frequently excerpted.

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino:
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.

I found this translation, by an A. Trueblood, but there might be a better one out there:

Wayfarer, the only way
is your footsteps, there is no other.
Wayfarer, there is no way,
you make the way by walking.
As you go, you make the way
And stopping to look behind,
You see the path that your feet
will never travel again.
Wayfarer, there is no way --
Only foam trails to the sea.

[madamevoilanska.livejournal.com]

As far as misfits go:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

-Emily Dickinson

[graveyardgrin.livejournal.com]

ooh, that's really cute and kind of sad. thank you!

[the-mighty-cait.livejournal.com]

Train tracks are mentioned in this one, if that's any help:

Travel

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing;
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

:)

[graveyardgrin.livejournal.com]

that's really lovely, thank you :D

[mutedheartbeats.livejournal.com]

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181279

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171908

i hope that helps <3

[graveyardgrin.livejournal.com]

it does! I really like the second one. thank you so much :)

[mutedheartbeats.livejournal.com]

:)

I'm not gonna resist the temptation...

[aliena-z.livejournal.com]

Two blonds are walking in the country, and they come across some tracks.
"Those are wolf tracks," one says.
"No, they're bear tracks," the other says.
"They're wolf tracks!"
"No, bear tracks!"
"Wolf tracks!"
"Bear tracks!"
The continue to follow the tracks, arguing all the way, and then suddenly they hear a noise...

The next day, the headline reads "Two Blondes Killed by Train"

* grins & ducks *

Damage // Lawrence Raab

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

A woman tries to saw her leg off.
Before she can finish, she passes out.
She wakes up in the hospital, discovers
the leg's still there, makes
her next plan: railroad tracks, a train.

She doesn't want to die,
she wants to get rid of the leg,
which she hates. Nothing's wrong with it,
but when she looks in a mirror
the woman she sees has only one leg.

Nobody's shocked anymore to hear
about men who believe they're women,
women who need to be men.
Some people dream of themselves
without legs or arms. Some dream
of making love to those without legs
or arms. Some dream of watching.

Are these arguments against
the existence of God? Not if this
is what God likes to do-experiment
with the endless ways desire
can make us crazy. How easy it must be
to do that to people. Is there anything
someone hasn't wanted? So the woman

is happy to lie down in the dark
on the cold tracks, the train
blindly approaching-and then
the thought that really
this isn't going to work, and then

the voice she's heard once or twice before
tells her to be still, tells her
not to be afraid,
tells her she can hardly imagine
how beautiful she will be.

Re: Damage // Lawrence Raab

[graveyardgrin.livejournal.com]

haunting. thank you for this. ♥

here's one about train tracks and also track marks

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

Heroin // Charlie Smith

I left a message for my editor to send copies of the contracts
to my new agent,
and then I read a passage about how no one talks
about heroin anymore, and the old life came back to me,
it was early yet, I hadn't used heroin for years,
I was one of the few rural junkies in the nation,
one of the few who tended cattle, there I was
nodding on a rock as the cows, stiff with unendurable shyness,
stumbled up to me. My wife and I would eat mashed potatoes
from the pot and lie out on the porch smoking reefer
until it got too dark to see. I bought the drugs
from my friend at the railroad repair depot
just off the main line from Norfolk, Indochinese material,
Long Bin -- to Guam -- to Fort Ord -- to VA -- then by Mr. Fixit train to me,
traveling in a nylon medic's bag. I never trusted
the supply -- like love -- it could dwindle,
or simply give way,
the flexed utensil, like one of those measuring sticks
you unfold and lay across a map; anybody could step on it.
I loved the graciousness of heroin, the way everything externalized
and obvious in the daylight opened its shirt and revealed its soft pale breasts.
The world slept curled in its own foolhardiness.
And my wife came carefully over the blankets to me and seemed
not to mind who I was. We inserted words
into spaces in the rain. For years I remembered the words
and whispered them to myself, half thinking I might
conjure her back into the world. They never caught us.
We missed them on the way to Mexico, to Puebla,
where eventually the line gave out. We slept on a bench outside a church.
It was two days before she died without regaining consciousness,
as I say in the memoir they are paying me so handsomely for.

Re: here's one about train tracks and also track marks

[graveyardgrin.livejournal.com]

We inserted words
into spaces in the rain.

I really really like that line. thank you so much!