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Raphael Rudnik On the train
(Beginning of a book-length poem in progress)
That spooky girl--a tiger-eyed beauty
Had the white silk skin of her face been uncut,
Instead a red hem was ravenously unripped
On the face she has to go through time with--made me
Wish God's hands could move again to make her not fail
In the flesh, but be bodied forth as all
Innocence is without pain, and faced freely as
Those flames at night, the moon and stars we rode under...
At first she seemed a bulky, milky whore--
Hurrying down the sunshot aisle with her guitar.
Why whore? A certain stationariness they have,
Even when walking (the very genius of
Each dumb, deliberate gesture's simply to be
There, somehow seeable before becoming the
Thing is is an emblem of--so much so that
There sometimes seems to be one of them: a building-
Front's little pillar swells alive bosomed by light,
That black girl with a red dress on is a firebox
Floating on shadow--the lampost with one leaning
On it's only a lampost----Oh anything, still
And silent on the city's floor at night, posing
As the original animal of our
Nakedness, desireable, and dead).--And, as she
Slid into the seat opposite facing me I
Caught a look of crooked hardness escaping the
Side of her eye, and what seemed wild rouging.
--But, who ever heard of a whore with a guitar?
And there it lay on her lap, her hands cradling the
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Toy-sized thing, like slow hope and comfort... waking faint,
Voiceless strings burning gold on their box.
Facing me at all--tallish torso twisted, legs
Crossed, sat sort of sidesaddle--face hidden behind
A great dusty bush of fragile stuff, wavering
As if underwater... twilit landscape poured past.
We took a curve-- (I saw the first car going on
Gleaming rails into forest following the black,
Sliding river)--she crouched forward in staunch,
Animal pride that pulled loose summer-green cloth
Tighter to her full roundedness.
Touch that bare bright knee with a green vein writing some-
Thing on, in it, next-to--no, in-between mine.
That mandatory, silent manipulation
Of limbs--the ramming jamming fucking sucking--that
Momentous leap out of himself any man makes
(In his mind) whenever woman's unexpected
Loveliness appears.--But, somehow I... still had not
Seen her face. Only smiling-high cheekbone-line and
Nose-tip nub showing past the soft-stiff stuff of hair
that the disc of fire burned blood-
Color above dim, forgetful blue mountains... dark,
Sleeping pines.----Hurrying clouds, covered the sun. A
Serried fortress keeping all radiance within.
A fat white animal let its blood of light fall
a great glass cane flashing
Disappearing... where one bird was.
Town, that has (virtually) no history.
Mostly deserted, like some worn barnacle stuck
----Cold and wild, too cold and wild to swim,
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Beautiful too, the river... the pines came closer
So thick sky behind them niched
Small as bright gunsights.--Some down stripped of their bark. Long,
Yellow inner bodies with round, revealed faces
Of suns. Green, evolved heights fallen all around. Strips
With white cracks as if they'd melted off from within.
--But, what is it one looks at in life--:
Bodies are a landscape, and we are lost in them.
So many, empty places nearbye.--Then why did
She come so close, stay twisted away... from me.
Where she was bound-for, and after she answered Why...?
Bawled back in obsequious condescencion:
‘Because, I want to see your face!...’
This last, an eerie coo--whose guarded pathos and
Appalling fulfillment, construeing more than my
Pigeon-heart could take, or make into meaning...
Let her hide... the metal-voiced train sang.
And I fell asleep, looking at others inside.
Our dolphin-skulled train headed west, following sun...
Long, narrow rooms rolled on wheeled waves of power,
Carrying the great weight of our lives, our deaths...
Pressed upon steel, to a clacking tempo.
We kept the river on our right (my right) facing
The way we went. Things leaping close snagged by sight----poles,
Signal-boxes, flowers grown through the gravel--all
Getting smaller slowly gone.
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Window-glass filth streaked
By rain from some other journey.
Is that golden mask her face, floating free there?
Frizzy hair-halo ignited at my eyes.
Train rammed through another green zone, leaf-shadows ran
Marrying on her live green dress... she seemed a
Solid shadow herself, a tree-souled thing
Out dying light, in darkening air...
On our way faster than before, black cars of
Silence carrying carloads of oblivion:
Each of us the other to the others.
(The guitar's open-faced basking stare said
To try to turn her by talking about it.)
Got no surprised glance, and only her shoulders hunched
As if about to enter a cold shower, but
When I laughed and added: ‘May I...?’----:
Antler of sunset-triggered light on her face,
In the space of that moment and movement
What I still took to be overdone make-up, while
More to the point of truth, her brutal painter,
Whipped it back behind her hair with a wild No-
Motioning jerk--chin-tightening neck-veins----an
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Overdeliberate, tremulous No now, was
Intensely disciplined against showing more face.
The great head going from side to side, as if
Denying (the greatest crime...) a deep confidence
To an old friend, slowly sunk down as if someone
Pushed it, lolling little Yes-nods (only going
With the iron tremor of the train...?)
Trembling till she bit down on it--.
Listened, as to something falling,
Tiny tinny sounds, like a bad drum heard over
the train playing it, the guitar... not her!
Heart-sounds heard now, word-pieces riding them: Why does
She come so close... stay twisted away... from me----
Where were they?--The thin, elderly conductor, the
One who said: ‘I'm a fast train, he's a slow train...’ and
The other, the purplest man I've ever seen...
Why didn't they come take her ticket--:
That would turn her, sure enough.
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