The Haikoan Train.

Author notes

Haikoans?
Zenryus?
What the hell are they?
And what´s the pretentious git up to now?
Five seven five is okay but do all ten add up to anything at all?
A train of thought perhaps but a stream of consciousness?
Ah no sorry it´s gone again.
Oh and thanx Nienna, Lad and other High Q stimulae.

Comments

• right now

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• 
  billbrando
  July 27, 2007
  
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  I don't know

  what to make of these, honestly.
  I like the title as these are in the tradition of haiku. The problem I'm having is that some of these are, at least for me, lacking emotional impact.
  The first one--I like the imagery you use: the steam, the train, the shift of perspective, but I admit I don't understand what it is this poem is trying to do. The emotional trigger seems to be missing.
  The second one, this takes me to memories of hearing birds singing early in the morning or late in the evening when the lighting is "just so," and there is that feeling, briefly, of magical possibility. The only thing I think isn't working is the juxtaposition of the soft, lulling feeling of line two with the rather alarming "drowning," in line 3.
  Everything about number 3 works. I feel like I'm standing outside by my own pond when it suddenly starts blowing darts of rain into my face and into my sides.
  Line two of this one is great: "Stagnant pool vomits pond-scum," that's a very unique image.
  Again, nice use of imagery in number 4, especially the last two, which do a fair job of evoking the fear and stillness just before the first "jagged fang" of lightning cracks the "black sky."
  Number 5 just isn't working for me. My working knowledge of anatomy and physiology is getting in my way (bile is secreted from the gallbladder), I realize you're using this poetically, so this is more me than you. The whole of it just lacks the subtelty of your other ones and the last line is just too obvious. Yeah, love often is a drag.
  Number six lacks considerably. There is no imagery or other poetic device. There's just this quote and a great deal of ambiguity. It's not really the ambiguity I object to (I'm not naive enough to believe life is "black and white);" but there really isn't anything for the reader to hold onto at all, nothing this ambiguity alludes to.
  Number seven is my favorite. God, what a great haiku! It took me two or three reads just to taste it all. I remember standing at water's edge on lazy summer afternoons and skipping stones with my little brother. This brought it all back.
  Number eight, well, other than seeing someone pulling petals off of a flower, this doesn't really do anything for me.
  Number nine, well, this one throws me for a loop. I like it though. I think the fresh use of images is most of it. "Smoking wombs breed old children/Placenta of coal," this is ambiguous but is so in a way that works. There's enough here for me to chew on and get me wondering. It's an artful puzzle.
  Number 10 is packed with images. Line one "barking dog howling," gives the impression that this animal is doing both at once, which I guess I've heard dogs do, so, cool. I like the off rhyme in line two. As a whole, I'm left thinking though, okay, sleepless night, but so what? Maybe it's my obtuseness leaking through, though.
  Number 11, she loathes you? I'm not clear on this
  I don't know what to say about twelve. Afterbirth is the expelled placenta. It's gross, slimy, and looks a lot like a dead jelly-fish; but what's your point?
  I didn't read these as being intended to be connected. Were they supposed to be linked thematically? I did pick up on some motifs: trains, sex, birth, etc.; but then others departed from them.
  Overall, I think there's a lot here to chew on and digest. I enjoyed reading them.

  . Rewarded 8
• 
  Ludmila607
  July 15, 2007
  
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  Trying to asimilate...

  That poem is like a laberint of words, I dont really know how to focus it because I read its everal times and cant really give it a meaning,only one meaning.I think it is like trying to read an idiom you never read.And it is extange because I always catch the meaning soon when it comes to your poems.
  The words are not complicated,the form is straight.I am having problems finding the point here.This is notnegative critique.Beacuase I will read it untill I find what you wanted to say here.
  ALways enjoying to read you.That Orus eye means something about your view of life?
  Ludmila-

  . Rewarded 8
• 
  scribbledthoughts
  May 1, 2007
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  gG

  These are all beautiful. Witty lines, too.
  
  When I read each one, I either say "awwww" or "grrrrrrrr". Especially loved
  Stanzas 5(so true, LOL),
  6 (funny!),
  9 (kinky! lol),
  10 (drama!),
  8 and 12 (a good twist, hehe -- never thought of it the other way around!)
  
  Missing links, indeed....
  
  Wonderful write as always, gG.
  
  warmest thoughts,
  LYNNE
  

  . Rewarded 6
• 
  pemaquid
  April 27, 2007
  
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  I love this

  This was really fun to read, and it was written beautifully. I found myself counting every syllable in the stanzas, but it was unfruitful since you have them perfectly! Good work

  . Rewarded 4
• Dun
  April 26, 2007
  
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  I'm lost right now...

  but I'm gonna chew on this for a while and I'll get back to you when I have something well informed and intelligent to say. I know as always that my efforts will pay off as I emerge from the bore of my confusion and shoot to comprehend the beauty of your constructs. Pretentious git? Never. Pretense alludes to no post after the pre, and there's always something behind your words. I'll be back.
  
  Al

  . Rewarded 8
• Terry-too
  April 22, 2007
  
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  An Episodic Poem

  I got the impression as I read, of a set of seat-locked passengers on a long and boring trip aboard a train, where nothing much is happening beyond ennuie and randomly predictable thought-processes triggered by random sights. Imagination being what it is what we get is far more interesting than what there really is.
  
  I have a reason for saying that--long, over-long and tedious train trips through a lot of years criss-crossing this huge province. Boring was my operative word, and quite frankly, I was boring too.
  
  
  Get someone to prod you awake as you read...
  A Soporific Memoir
  
  As one who rode trains
  years of years ago, caught own
  episodic views...
  
  Fragmented boredom
  snatched compulsory reading
  for tests on return.
  
  A student then, poor.
  No car back then for weekly ride
  to Teachers' College,
  
  and back, the station
  speeding away behind:
  Relativity
  
  while we sat still
  watching stuttered telephone poles
  accelerating.
  
  The very familiar
  weekly phenomenon of
  distance measured in
  
  hours not in miles
  ticking off the ticked off riders
  captive in boredom.
  
  No explorations
  of physiologicals.
  Other things in mind.
  
  No tunnels waited,
  this was '49 after all,
  no speculations
  
  or imaginations,
  amid peregrinations
  until at long last,
  
  sounds of arrival
  untangled the knotted limbs
  that waited so long
  
  for release into
  creaky action down the car
  and out into fresh air,
  
  on the boarded walk
  the length of the train which sighed
  white steam of waiting
  
  as we walked, to be
  forgotten like assigned reading,
  as yet still waiting.
  
  ----------
  
  So what triggered the memory?
  Need you ask?
  

  . Rewarded 8
• 
  jera jam
  April 21, 2007
  
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  Yippee

  I love poems like this, not that i get to read them very often. So much going on, and great sounds, and a strange, slightly ominous moody move from the traditionally poised and objective calm of the haiku, to some angry, dirty raping of nature all of which is insipiring and good. This is one of my favourites:
  
  Night trains fuck tunnels,
  Smoking wombs breed old children -
  Placenta of coal.
  
  The only thing I have to say which isnt rapture is that the different haikus are at first so different that the pattern, and repetition (around about she loathes me...) comes as a bit of a surprise - i.e. i didn't feel led through a journey, but sort of dumped to look at this image, then dumped to look at that... all of which makes an exciting but somewhat violent ride of a poem.
  

  . Rewarded 8
• dave ochs
  April 21, 2007
  
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  hey gG

  richard bratigan wrote a haiku...
  a bit of salad
  i was eating fell off my fork
  so what
  
  and thats the way i felt. but even with the prentioutous form your(s) pack some punch. theres something about the inverted order of your working and imagery that added knocked me off center, a delicious assymetry.
  
  night trains fucking tunnels is something i'll try to think off when I'm top of the old lady, as a way to try to get some mojo.
  
  dave

  . Rewarded 8
• 
  Nienna Colle
  April 20, 2007
  
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  AUGH!! I'm totally lost now. I moved far too quickly from a last train to vomiting pond scum to tunnel fucking trains and placentas of coal to loathing and then finally to afterbirths. JESUS. I love the apparent randomness (unless I just can't find whatever it is that binds these to each other). I'm a little bit creeped out now, actually which is definitely what I look for in your poetry...inexplicable fear!
  
  The first time I stumbled (not a bad thing) was when you mentioned "drowning in feathers". I got this ridiculous image in my head of the original bird shit raining down from the sky but this time accompanied by the gray downy-ness that comes off of pigeons (the vilest creatures in my opinion). It made me shiver with disgust. It amazes me you can still MAKE me think that while using only 5 syllables. You sly devil...
  
  And then you called heaven a man. Which really confused me but made sense after I saw his rage...yeesh.
  
  I think that people would be enraged that you arranged that lovely flower-destroying rhyme "she loves me she loves me not" into a five seven five syllable count and called it a poem. But poets are not people. We have no soul that is why we're so shrewd :-) Ergo I thought it was brilliant...I felt stupid that I didn't do it myself (on the other hand I figure it takes a genius to even realize that will work and I am not so I surrender to your awesome power!)
  
  And then afterbirth vs after birth. Messy thing to deal with but a nice way to leave the reader considering I DO feel like I've witnessed my own chaotic and begrudging birth. Now I can be calm...after I've gotten those grotesque (and lovely) thoughts out of my head...
  
  Nienna shivering
  
  PS Nice

  . Rewarded 8
• • 
    gnosisonG
    April 23, 2007
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    Ticket to Deride.

    Excellent comment for which I express profound thanx, Nienna!
    A train ride evoking queasiness and even nausea! Great.
    Reminds of a few train journeys I´ve had the dubious pleasure of undertaking (now there´s a loaded word!) in India. Third class of course.
    Pigeon feathers - perfect interp, L.
    Number 4 is a bit ominous, but in haiku tradition it could just be about Thunder.Lightning.Striking.
    If there is any link at all palpable then its certainly a personalized one lingering around thoughts of rocky relationships. Very much a mix of grotesque and beauty as you kindly state.
    And hahahah, you´re right, poets can´t be people. At least not with "souls". Like Irma Vep we suck on the juices lubricating life (essentially on the mental plane). I like the idea of Irma Vep as a physical avatar of a poet´s wandering/lost soul!
    Self-negation is an important method for clear writing I feel. My tribute to The Void lies also in the short version of my Nom de Plume. The gG s of gnosisonG are both silent g s, so correct pronunciation of gG would be a breath of air. (Inhaled or exhaled doesn´t really matter.)
    
    Loftiest regards
    
    ...
    
• 
  Lad
  April 20, 2007
  
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  This train tracked under the Bermuda Triangle...

  ...circled around down there and never, no never returned, and its fate is still unlearned. The conductor and his two collaborators - Koanan the Barbarian and Oxy the Moron - collected our tickets, then went back to the smoking car and flew away laughing. Well, gG, that's my first impression.
  
  The second? A Zen Master-Roshi would be proud of these little ditties - although ouching a bit at the 6th one's slightly stumbled syllable count - because they are indeed koans, haikus and senryus, albeit nicely altered in form, all wrapped into one streaming poem.
  
  The third? Missed links in a chain for sure: the links that were intended by "Heaven" to create a cause-and-effect sensibility to the world, but that's long gone these days - and the poem reflects our many surreally hidden impulses and thoughts that cry for our attention, but are dismissed: too beautiful sometimes, too scary other times.
  
  The fourth? gG has finally cracked the cosmic egg - sane to insane, and Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Veil has at last overcome the nutty poet. Lock the menace up!!!
  
  The fifth? Dismiss the fourth. See the third, but add: I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I think this might be what he thinks he might be up to...but then again (again and...) maybe not.
  
  Aw crap, Simon, the ten are a treat of syllable, image and sound whatever the hell they mean. As I read them five times (you owe me!), I was pleased at their sweetness and chortled at their macabre fun he was weaving as he wrote.
  
  Favorite line: "Moon bullfrog croak hooting owl." Talk about a deliciously packed line!
  
  All in all, a hallucinoSimon treat. I'll be calling my shrink in the morning.
  
  Lad
  
  
  
  

  . Rewarded 8
• • 
    gnosisonG
    April 22, 2007
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    And All Aboard The Disorient Express!

    Cheers, Lad. And thanx for spotting Koanan and Oxy´s contributions! I recently purchased The Seventh Veil, about time to renew my aquaintance with it.
    I loved the interpretive rejoinder of your third impression, Lad. Yepp, I´ll take it!
    The blindspots of our mind´s eye. An interesting thematic premise. Hmmm, now you´ve got me cogitating...
    I guess the essence of short pithy projections like haikus must be to addle our wits with a bit of contemplative conjuration.
    
    Mamma, I Shrunk the
    Shrink! There must be a haiku
    in here somewhere, right?
    
    Regards
    
    gG