the age of the train (part three)

the final part of my rail-inspired trilogy, bringing me back to the station from hell as a potential point of inspiration (following the train of thought that bad inspiration is better than no inspiration at all).

Write On Track

looking back
to years ago
when writing was such pleasure then
brings me write back
to what i know
(and try to find my pen again)

just something swift
and off the cuff
to open the floodgates once more
a welcome lift
(more than enough)
to bring the verses to my door

an introduction -
nothing greater -
i feel the rhyme come flooding back
East Croydon station
(my inspiration)
brings me home and write on track


November 1998

i can't remember if i wrote this as a direct result of increasing my poetry output - becoming the gateway to a whole new productive era - or something that i wrote much later as an afterthought. in fact checking the dates on my database (tech-geek meets poetry, it's a wonder i have any friends) i'm not at all sure that they are in any way correct. I suppose it doesn't really matter and can wait until the 2069 hardback collected edition to celebrate the 100th birthday of the modern-era's most influential poet...

apropos of nothing

only because it's such a great poem, written speedily and with great venom towards an ex-housemate of mine from heady days as a placement student at The Royal Oldham Hospital...

Worth Repeating

I loathe and despise you
Never ever said I liked you
See what's bad
and what's worse
is that sadness inside you

I just can't understand you
There's no-one quite like you

I dislike you intensely
I intensely dislike you


November 1992

until writing the above paragraph, i've not given Oldham much thought over the last 10 years or so. looking back it (or the 1992 version of it) wouldn't be the kind of place i'd like to live now, but i met some great people - some of whom i'm still infrequently in touch with - and learnt plenty about myself and the future career i was about to blunder into. basically, if i'd never been to Oldham, i'd have never become a web-developer, or gone to London, or met my wife, or had my kids. Well, i still may have done all those things, but life would definitely have been different, so for Oldham (and the hospital) i suppose i am very grateful.

although you wouldn't have thought so reading the following, written after experiencing small-town mentality first hand only weeks after arriving...

High Stools

Sit on high stools
A station above me.
Surrounded by fools,
I know you don't love me.

Be still my heart,
Control all my fears;
I 'ant missed a dart
In thirty-odd years.

I think that I'll fly
To try and avoid them.
Smile while you die
and 'Welcome to Oldham'.


October 1992

the age of the train (part two)

i'm not angry with gner anymore, although i still haven't tackled my complaint form due to on overwhelming sense of apathy and the knowledge that merely looking at it will make my blood boil...

leeds station. 2 hours waiting for a train. pissed off.

Anyway, sticking very loosely to the train theme (which will probably only become apparent after the follow up to this poem has been uncovered) is the follow up to The Creep Who Stole Croydon; my own incredibly simplistic take on Coleridge's Dejection in which i accuse myself of throwing any old shit together in an attempt to produce something poem-like at the end. There's something about reading it out aloud that reminds me of the rythmic 'clank-clank' that seemed to be ever prevolent on the old slam-door death-traps i used to frequent.

All Write Now

Telegraph punch lines
Yards down the track
Over simplified
(It'll all work out somehow)
Use of Thesaurus
Vocabulary I lack
All write now.

Monumental instrumental
Tools of the trade
Writing through youth
With the greatest aplomb
Dig myself deep
In the grave that I made
Write on write on write on.

Set myself in stone
The end of an age
Invisible works
Materialise somehow
Standing accused
Of the promise that I made
All write now...


April 1997

Note: looking at my poetry database i've since realised that the above poem was originally titled 'It's All Write'. i'm not sure now which one i like best...