When we did our spontaneous Train to Everywhere project earlier this week, I did, in fact, make an attempt at a poem. I wanted to be like ALL MY COOL FRIENDS who were doing the same.
I did post that bit of doggerel to Facebook, but not in the end-result virtual anthology I flung up here on the blog. It seemed too trite on the one hand, but not funny enough to stand up to the limericks and higgledy-piggledy poems I found so amusing. So I omitted submitting myself to myself.
Over the next few days, however, I grew increasingly restless. I wanted to write a train poem too! I was JEALOUS. ITCHY. COMPETITIVE WITH THOSE OTHER 36 POEMS I LOVED TO WATCH BLOOM OUT OF THE PIXELS!
Since moving to New York a year ago August, trains have become inextricably entwined with my life. I have a 3.5 hour super-commute (one-way!) to work, and that’s not to mention all the intracity traveling. I’ve been having BIG FABULIST THOUGHTS about trains, like FRANK O’HARA levels of NEW YORK MYTHIC.
Anyway, so I sat down with my pretty yellow journal and I scrawled out a first draft of something. By the time I finished typing it out and tweaking it, it was 1.) Way longer than any of the other poems we put up, so it still didn’t fit, but 2.) Maybe a poem I actually really liked, and 3.) A thing that might fit the requirements for a poem for an anthology I’m contracted to contribute to sometime next year . . . !!!
Which is to say, I can’t chat about it too much now, and I still must revise and revise, and have several poet’s eyes upon it, but I think that this thing, this sub for next year I was vaguely worried about, has taken a shape I find . . . pleasing . . . even in its nascent form.
I haven’t been writing much poetry lately–not since I started writing songs, really–and nothing that has pleased me as much as my own earlier poetry used to. Not lately. Not in two years at least.
But I felt something crack open a bit. Some wall I’d built, for whatever reason. And I just wanted to say thank you for playing with me, poet friends. I can’t wait till “Wyrm City” is in a state (of draft and possibly of publication) to share with you.
C.S.E. Cooney 