Sleepers

I watch them sink in ballast

 

Once, then a second time, then a third

In slow agony

 

I hear the groans

 

Unity

 

Six feet above but intrinsically involved

A spinning mass assaults my ears

Cougar in a blue mesh cage

 

Deep within this drumskin frame

Precise witchcraft of heat exchange

Ludwig Boltzmann cut down to cries of anguish

 

Genesis contained and channelled

Expansion

Reciprocal excursions between points

Acceleration

Rotation

 

Mass in motion

 

Mimesis of the cosmic spectacle

Electrons streamed through busbars

To a mirror image of precision

Between the flanged wheels

And sleepers sink

One by one

Into the ballast

 

A human

Man

Because it was a man then

Sits in his throne upon the stage

 

The fleshy fingertip draws the toggle-switch

Eeyore!

Announcing his adherence to the diagram

 

This is obsolete

The diagram exists without the human

Passenger

 

The tonnage quickens

 

Sleepers sink to the quickening rhythm

Waste heat and gas

No longer constrained within Victorian hubris

Fuck off into the ether, as it were

 

The cacophony bursts into the living world

Leaking to the edges of existence

 

I know how it feels

 

The rhythm rhythmically rises

To its half-measure end

 

So what?

 

That piece of shared experience ended 43 years ago

Which makes me kind of wonder

Why you’re reading this