John Train's Blues

The ripples crawl into the past as easily as they travel forward
Across the mast to seduce the sails which sway above an anchor
Into the ocean of your yearning, blue and vast and unrestrained
It’s here, not there, that they reside, unsettling what’s contained
I will not speak of love with words that sting or fertilize flowers
I do not wish to flatter or to sling uneasy arrows at flesh harbours
Where swims the ache of eternity, bedridden but never sleeping
Because it’s here where all the hope hides out to listen to the ancient beating
I watched a bottle tangle with a girl made out of paper
It all happened so fast in the pitch black that I didn’t see him rape her
But I found her ripped and soaking, the bottle staggered off confused
The shattered himself against a post after whistling John Train’s Blues
I changed when you died and I never returned; It rained around my eyes
We painted and paraded our memories and planted you in the hillside
From the cracks in your bones grew a grey stone; now I visit it instead
Your cowboy dreams are gold-dust gathering in the fountains of my head
When the firing squad of loneliness discharges in the darkness
A child will rip at the grass to teach his newfound tongue a question
Between my hat and my boots I take and blend all these colours of the rainbow
And the ladders in my eyes extend into what I do not know