POETS ELLEN and ENID OSBORN
Tuesday, Sept. 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Artists Union Gallery
Hosted by Roe Estep
The Painting Locomotive, by Van Gogh
By ellen
Near the end of his life
Vincent said to Theo
I am the painting locomotive
slashed the spectrum of hues
from yellow to ochre’s billowing wheat
in a feverish race—his eyes
piercing twin tracks of light
like a coal fired steam-engine’s
great screeching brakes.
Excerpt from NIGHT TRAIN
By Enid Osborn
He wanders long and long
the whole long train,
chaste and astonished by their faces, their losses,
and lost in the rhythmic, now arhythmic beat and clack
of the rails, rough and missing
like a faulty heart
The locomotive’s sad herald cry barely reaches him
from another realm, another train
Not this one he prays over,
not this long night,
not this long train he wanders aching through
He is far away from the world,
from the miles of ramshackle track
where fallen spikes lie rusting in the rocks,
reaching for their lost beds,
and the oily, split tyes
yawn in tortured speech
to bear the terrible heat and fire spark
of countless train tons laboring through the night…
Every Tuesday you can find an open mic and every other Tuesday a featured reader or two at the Artists Union Gallery. It’s free–but they often take donations to give to the poet.
To find more poetry, take a ride on the Monday Poetry Train!
whisper down the write alley 