train

this is one of my few, amateurish attempts in poetry. I've been fascinated with the metro train culture and found that the train's window could be quite an interesting image to play with. I plan to write some more for fine-tuning. --Kimee


You,

beating the drudgery

of conventional traffic

I, in my escapist tendencies of

living European--

the train, i feel, is a cosmopolitan tryst if not for

the clump of bodies in between us

a sorry shipment of commuters from some bucolic sty,

they with eyebrows seemingly incapable

of hoping beyond their gossip,

elbowing, nudging, bullying me away from you.

i settle for the train's glass window,

the same window through which

we see the same building and sky

the same dreams flashed on glazed billboards overlooking

the same church belltowers greyed and neutered

in spirit and duty.

we see the same trees precious in their intermittence.

We see each other

beholding the same longing and defeat--

the language of the flesh conceding to the language of glass:

Us, brittle reflections warped

by the chill of its infidelity,

how dare it give you an unjust remaking of my beauty,

deprive you with its thoughtless obligation of freezing the fire in my gaze.

the train speeds off

you beating traffic; I, living European.

we battle the same bodies in between us, we chase the same dreams.

but as parallel trains are fated never to meet and touch,

Here we are.

suffering the impotent symmetry of restraint.

counting on glass, lusting on glass,

waiting till we finally get off the same stop.