Poem 97

Bob Dylan’s box set Biograph was on repeat in my original cassette tape Walkman in the latter half of the eighties … it featured a live version of Visions of Johanna that rivalled the original and only increased my fascination with the rhyme scheme of that song … eventually I wrote a poem with the same structure to see if I could do it – and also borrowed the song’s love-triangle scenario of someone with one partner and simultaneously pining after an ex … Dylan based it on his relationships with Sarah Lowndes and Joan Baez … in my case it was pure imagination …

( yes it’s a bit overwrought – like the song! – but I love some of the imagery here – bored school kids visiting the museum of me, cars like broken marriages in twos and threes, the spin on Oscar Wilde’s ‘looking at the stars’, and particularly the bees in yellow sheets across the ground … then of course there’s the bravura seven-rhymes-in-a-row at the climax … title relates to train of thought as well as the obvious camp connotations at the end … The Sleeping Gypsy is still my favourite Rousseau, had a poster of it for many years …  )

Concentration Train

The traffic plays loud through the crevices of a steady rain
as shrieking from the air down to the airport
drops the late evening plane
Carmel inclines her head to a book and a shaft of hair
covers the name
the record hisses and glitters between songs
I think of people I knew when I knew where I belonged
about Louise and the unimportance of the difference
between stubborn and strong
and the way she would stand in the morning
deciding what to put on

as the fighter that was lust spits out a final tooth
as a school party in a draughty room yawns over my youth
as still the rain like snakes flickers under the edges of the roof
and Carmel sighs and stretches
and counts off half her rosary
I see Louise hook her shoes across her shoulders
inside the white noise of the sea
saying I know how hurtful you can be
you'll have to learn that you can't hurt me
and cars pass like broken marriages
in twos and threes

there's a murderer whistling on the highway
there's a body deep in the lime
but where's the point in fishing after it forever
with only her throwaway lines?
now Carmel wonders what happens to the time
she crosses to the calendar and marks a day I didn't leave her
she says this boat you're building
you should break me on the bow and call it Pleasure
she tells me it's not my fault I spent my childhood in the freezer
but to next time pick some woman
who finds this kind of thing easier

in my favourite Rousseau painting the lion eats the gypsy's guitar
while the moon rises like a razor blade snail
leaving a silver scar
I hear Louise talking saying maybe
we're all in the gutter but some of us are acting like stars
she certainly did impress me when I met her at the Lost And Found
I've always believed in second sight at first-hand
no matter how unlikely that sounds
I was heading out the door with an armful of coats
when the sound of her voice pulled me round
like I was told the thunder can bring down bees
in yellow sheets across the ground

it seemed to me then that I boarded the train that stops for the very few
whose lighted windows flick by like a film
until the lines bend them out of view
I still wake up and wonder why she couldn't be on it too
you'd be surprised how slow electrocution is
just sitting in your favourite chair
as Louise dances on the far lash of sight
with a choirboy without a prayer
and Carmel sleeps beside me dreams crackling out of her hair
chimneys rise smoking in the winter air
I see the train unload in the floodlights' glare
I add my clothes to the mountain in the empty square
place my shoes beside a million other pairs
and join the line that shuffles slowly toward the trees
the iron gate shuts and the inscription reads love
love will set you free