Steven Waling

Shadowtrain

Steven Waling

BAD COLD

The next stop is Bessie's o' th' Barn

or a sneeze dismantling the universe.

Is that a break in the clouds

next Friday? Nostalgia sets in at 50;

I feel every week of my age.

Some sweet green tea and a tissue.

I need an injection of sun.

Because I'm a man it's my job

I'm taking this illness too far.

What's that mobbing the lampposts?

The sky's an ache. Pigeons.

Metaphysical with snot,

I sit by the window at the front;

my head needs truth, and Nurofen.

THE MAN WITH THE BLUES GUITAR

Who never joined in the washing-up

but paradiddled through his hang-ups

in the room next door? The drummer

with no rhythm. A certain stamp. I nod:

Handwriting, you say, eventually,

cross-legged, out of Picasso: it's like…

Buddha descended from Parys Mountain

via Memphis to the Delta Blues. My turn

to wash up, while you slide down

the surface, a chord on the edge

of remembrance: years later, you'll catch

a dose of employment or marriage,

I'll hear your playing pubs round Wylfa

with a band and a riff of Howlin' Wolf's.

I pick up the cups, you pick your guitar,

a joint you don't offer jags from your mouth

IN HITLER'S BATH

Why so obsessed with the 2^nd World War?

She's scrubbing the eyes off her skin.

If you introduce Hitler into argument

you've already lost: go down that route

we'll end up with the Third Reich.

An SS guard floats down the canal,

male Ophelia in leather coat to die for.

She dares me, pokes her head over the tiles

like a flower in a pot. Documentary

not art, the marvellous in everyone's grasp.

Though she never got the scoop, still,

the burgomeister's daughter, suicided,

plays a mean Pietà of the Couch.

War's a sin except on celluloid,

Saturday afternoons instead of sport:

the way she stares at the camera

as she rinses her perfect skin, her eye

slicing mens' hearts up like bread.

THROUGH THE WHITE HOLE

This far out, space isn't black it's white.

The woman across from me is reading

as her son the mountaineer

climbs the sheer face of her calm.

Outside the window an abstract hedge,

trees looming. Is that really my face?

It's like the whole country wears

a badly fitting suit and a tie as it

strains through raw cotton to Bristol Temple Meads

and my interview. The lighting of lamps

on fogbound stations breaks my heart,

they offer two A's and a C.

Can I breathe in this atmosphere?

Professors speak like newsreaders

chatting theology. Antique furniture

burnished as the day it was bought

and I don't get the grades. In a galaxy

far far away, a girl in a summer dress

steps onto the platform. My future

slides into the station. I change trains.

Copyright © Steven Waling, 2006