Thursday, 5 April 2012

Heroes OR Imagination, a (Free) Ticket to Ride

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Now, I  dare say we are all heroes, each in our own way, if only for just for getting on with the business of everyday living. 

We all need heroes to inspire us, and where we can’t find any to tick our particular boxes, the chances are we'll invent them.

HEROES or  IMAGINATION, A (FREE) TICKET TO RIDE

Every morning I’d watch them
run for the train,
catch it with seconds to spare
then relax in my seat,
wondering just who they were
and if they were lovers
or friends, maybe neighbours
but, no, there was more
to the way they ran for the train
than met the eye,
the reason why easy to tell
because their faces
were alive, not like those others
I saw every morning
on the 6.15 to a bread factory
that could even have given
bodies in a mortuary a good run
for their money

Always late, never out of breath,
leaping aboard,
straight into fantasies I’d weave
around them;
no ordinary pair (yes, definitely
a pair, I was sure)
they would be living the high life,
burning the candle
at both ends, night after night,
(so always late)
then they’d fall into bed, take sex
for a heady trip…
heading for the surreal, shades
of a looking-glass war
while ordinary folks like me just
don’t have the bottle
(or the money) it takes for drugs
so we’ll play safe

Divine looks, designer gear, it was
too much to bear
each morning on the way to work
where I don’t want to be
so all the more reason to enjoy
my little fantasy…
about heroes of the 6.15 who were
always late,
their brief (like gods) to make
their own fate,
have the world turn on such beauty
it did not deserve,
making an open declaration of sorts
about a politics of heart,
body and soul that even the worst
of temporal measures
fail to have put down, rogue traders
going for the jugular

One day, they just missed the train;
no heroes after all, only human

[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]

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