Words Woven From The Sadness Of Evening Trains

I too have seen faces of dust and grease,
     faces small before hungry cement
     and nameless castles of crystal.
I have seen the mushroom-faced mothers on the trains,
     their children bawling like hooved animals.
They know what they can live without.
They know the aching weight of days.
The women turn uglier with each punishment.
Though they stretch dimes until their fingers bleed,
     an eternity of macaroni lies before them.

The men digging through the station garbage bins
     are resigned to the reek of their bodies.
They have my father's scoured eyes and bones
          chiselled by woodworm.

I have taken the trains of the cities
     and cried in them as a child
     cries in a zoo hung with carcasses.
The wounded people surround me,
     blue-lipped girls roped in cheap dresses,
     boys with ugly mouths, lust caught
     like meat between their teeth.
The people are here.
Their hands are shaped as my hands are.

Even the tears of children are not forgotten,
     their miseries enormous in soft minds,
     dying pets, torn colouring books,
     mysterious torn flesh.
The wail of a yearling speaks for us
     like a shrunken cherub.
Those with teeth say nothing.
We bite our ulcered lips,
     suck on these festering moments
     with mouths that taste of metal and nail polish.

We cough.
Our noses run
     but our eyes are dry lizards.
Beneath their virgin wool, even the businessmen
     shiver in terror from this quick plague of days.
Beyond the windows, our sky unfolds like a black orchid,
     petals infested with glittering mites called stars.