3 Train Thoughts

A collection of thoughts on trains and their environment

Train Thoughts 1

After years of mental masturbation to the end of skewed perceptions,
I tired of my closed minded and self-enraptured pursuit
and wondered what it would be like
once again to be human.

Though I remained limitingly homo sapien
I had found my mentality fractured.

Though the pieces of my once all together self remained,
the smithereens into which they had been smashed meant they couldn't
suggest even a minor semblance of the reality I once knew.

The world I inhabited now was merely theoretical,
the only guise of reality was uncontrollable emotions,
whether they be fear or lust or anger or such.

The strange thing with being an inhabitant on such a landscape
is you never fully believe the realm in which you exist,
but, at the same time are assured of its parallel path to the life you lead.

To be human was, of course, a phrase
I alluded to to suggest conformity.

Not conformity those in student riots
addicted to sub cultures adulterate and mislead themselves in,
rather the 'I meet people',
'I have a job',
'I wake at a certain time',
'To ride public transport getting drunk is a self-deprecating pursuit.'
Theme of thought

Public transport had always been a love of mine.
Living in London
my young self became exposed and imbibed
with a drunken cocktail of experiences,
entertainments an ex-curricular socializing.

Through my life since then,
this heady narcotic
(for all my time inhabiting this intoxicating virus of a city)
has been used
in combination with various other substances I abused.

Affecting my heightened
(or lowered)
state with a nuanced abandon,
churlishly goading me with fake truths.

On a return to sobriety,
the reality was offensive,
garish in its truth.

Bright honest fear of others
and pride of perception bullied
my slowly recovering psyche.

It was as to one
who had lived the past 7 years with earphones
sellotaped to their ears
playing a loop of white noise,
having them suddenly torn out and the detail
and information they now had to process sending them
into conniptions.

The media with which I had sedated myself indoors
had me on a flawed TV logic,
a pornographic perspective,
a rappers morals.

Confused, self-defeating,
poisonously idealistic.

To be near people was a stimulus I could not tolerate
the effects of.

Questions arose from eye contact,
mirrors of myself,
slaloming in their irises.

My feelings ranged from anger at their misconceptions
to paralyzing embarrassment
at probable truths I had sought to evade.

Bossy language deafened me with
unexplainable minute gestures;
honesty fled my imagination
as the reality of my lack of understanding
daunted me.

Why did it seem
women on the train always stood with their behind
facing me,
why men their front.

Were they presenting,
was I a receptacle with which to collect sexual posturing?

I suppose my love of the tube came
from its somehow undefinable nature.
A place of more than merely human husks
going somewhere,
to do something.

But rather where people unveiled themselves,
a parade of insecurities,
perversions and self conceptions projected.

I loved the microcosm of humanity it held,
even in the pretence
the candour of reserve
screamed tortuous tales of a society at once
confused,
determined.

I try to remember my unpolluted mind
and think back
to before every object suggested a million interpretations.

But I wouldn't be able
to truthfully say as to whether I felt
like this or not.

But I feel it was this mesh
of vulnerable truths that had first allured me,
of which I had now become yet another reflective
surface, projecting
an endless image with the other mirrors around me,
we would stare deep into
without comprehension of the time,
waste and folly.




Train Thoughts 2

There are times
when being on a crowded train can provide
a brief glimpse of serenity.

The close packed
heavy, humid, human aroma'd capsule of
travel provides,
conversely,
a sliver of private reflection.

A dose of unadulterated silence
in the close confines of shared experience.

To proffer the ideal of silence
in the cacophonous undulating clicka-clunch,
cougha chug
could seem ignorant.

Ignorance,
as often remarked,
can be bliss.

In this semi deafening monotony
of staid faces and dull demeanours,
we are offered a moment of reflection.

A mirroring of the times.

An opportunity to reflect on
oneself in the humanity of restraint.

A glance can be cast,
unrequited.

Eyes dancing
along the solemn profiles,
in perfunctory study of one to another
to another.

Halted briefly by another gazing in.

A comma in the prose of identity inspected.

Comfortable in its brevity.

The eternal vacuum of interaction can
provide solace
from the very same equation of people
in another venue.

This is an environment
sterilized by its filth.

A perfect balance of contamination.

Splutters, sniffs and coughs
shared
as secret promises.

Honest tokens of confession,
splurted out disarmingly.

Sworn to secrecy for
an afford of intimacy
with people we'll never know.

The unspoken etiquette was sacrosanct.

Knowing disencounters and
telling uninvolvement.

A diet of the reticent,
mixed with closed eyed false meditators
and anxious extroverts.

I, drunk,
enjoyed as a voyeur.

Snacking at a buffet of human experience.

Sampling their despair,
enjoyment and fear
in equal quantities.

Not for sustenance,
rather for the pleasure delivered to the palette.

How the personalities danced on my tongue.

Frivolities of the necessary.

Indulgence of the pertinent.

It aided me nought

I was benefitted by the communion,
a sly theft of their attendance acquired
I toyed with.

Pretending it was mine,
alluring in its illicitness.

Without it I was not less,
rather less aware.

What the awareness brought was comfort,
the assuage of the disenchanted accompanying
my merry disappointment.

To dance would be to mislead,
so I casually and cautiously sipped from the rim.

Soothing sips of a truth convoluted
and uninterested
in my state.

To ponder the others life was to pervert and destroy the illusion.

I closed my mind
and travelled safely,
without judgement,
with comfort of the unknown.











Train Thoughts 3

Having been inducted
once again
into the pic n mix nature of civilization,
I once again became allured by others
perceptions.  

Living without others becomes more of a tangible exercise
in manifesting consciousness
than actually existing.  

It becomes theoretical.  

My theory was flawed
and
however admirable
became to my detriment.  

It wasn’t sourced from a love
of self or a core belief,
it was rather a genesis grown from my insecurities,
being that that was its birth
I deemed it flawed in its conception.

Conceptions though are all perfect in their existence
when viewed from the perspective that an idea
being born
doesn’t need to have any value
or use in implementation.  

While alone,
conceptions bred and emerged,
with a viral ferocity.  

Growing mysteriously,
a mixture between synthetically and organically,
like bubbles at the start of a bath.  

The proliference of ideas born
all had a core,
and that core was purpose.  

‘Is the song worth writing
if music itself
is a luxurious pursuit
of selfish base’,

‘Is to watch TV
impure as by definition,
it is purposed to an end
divergent from the well-being of humans’,

‘Is to feel not enough
as without actions
and discipline,
it is worth is nought?’

Being purposed was to believe.  

Believe in your worth and how it should be spent.  
Believe in your morals
and that it was implicit
with beliefs
that they should be exercised.  

Where these dual purposes became convergent
was at a point where you had to consider
whether you believed in what you did
because of others,
or because of yourself.  

I couldn’t deduce the apex of my purpose,
its axis,
its fulcrum.  

Was I offering the lady on the train my seat
because I wanted her journey to be better
and more comfortable,
or because I felt my own
social responsibility and therein
moral esteem could arise from it?  

Is my purpose to be good,
based on empathy or pride?  

Did I look at others as less than me
comparatively
as a result of my own actions?

The truth in such a case offered itself as irrelevant;
the action was truth,
its motivation perversion.  

To help even
if for the wrong reason
was of more worth to the needy individual
than a good thought unenacted.  

The purity of purpose was a pursuit of aspiration.  

Not it’s flawed conception or genesis.

I for one became beleaguered with
the industrious rigmarole that sapped
my energy to death.  

Exhausting me with its own perverse ideals,
in aspiration of its own nefarious goals,
complicit with this society of self concern.

Author's Note

Would be interested to hear all feedback. This did start as prose, but I felt it was to stilted in that fashion, presenting it as I have seems to break up the rhythm more. Does it work, is it even allowed?

Reviews

[Robert James Parfett]

Anything is allowed. There's definitely a lot going on. I personally enjoyed your mind wanderings.

[James]

I like the 2nd and 3rd more than the 1st.