Steel Balls

Mechanized age, cogs moved deliberately,
greasy, moistened, silicone viscous WD-40
turned by chain, one cog, the next,
dissolving gulf between sprockets,
smooth, slowing legs everso slightly.

Train tested courage.
Mile-a-minute-Murphy
famous train ride draft:
black freight inch to nose,
wild mechanized beast unregulated.
One special ride.

Knew Cincinnati yards watched by
Pinkertons; ham-radio-handed-vigilant-law
bust on ones: hobos, bums,
Guthries, Seeger, Baez, Dylan,

musicians of loretonguehear
no tunes excepting in their heads,
reciting, nobody heard, longfoodlines,
"Can I do a good deed,"
ain't no freeloader;

tell the man. Dark trains,
shadowy pockets, gloomy terror;
heavy metal track, creosoted ties piled.
Scattered theives within union,
caboose pass separated man from God.

Rode blue flake silver bicycle,
worked at growing; domestique shouting,
"One." Cleat shod feet strapped to
Marcel Berthet Lyotards.
Fourteen; enough man to race
city giant tough boys-
emotive rocket angry at schoolteacher Penck.
Forced spindly legs , over a rise,
extra tooth on cog, spinning gear,
spitting, away from others.

Tempted. Peddler; facing down demon
prove courage, scare them bloody ass backwards.
Whistle in immovable moving object night
of soul sounds up close breath
in ear like stink rattle breakdown.

Sing no temptation. Not tempting.
Trace some course; psychologist's son
morally mistaken double-blind experiment,
argued, no choice.
Correct mistake through reenactment

reversal, replace temptation. Positive
experience, avoid self-denial.
Words have no credibility
under God; answer up in smoke.
Logic comes from breakdown.

Language arts tools of unobserved,
whole reassembles parts. Interchange
cloverleap developing stars lonely
script of stardom. Trestles,
underpasses, toll booths are

basic transactions with moral rewards.
Man you better hand over the reins,
God's in charge. Elijah knocks,
questions God's committment, morality;
a particular law, no wine....

Blind repitition, same mistake,
establishing studs' stupidity as norm.
Mistake repeated same way twice,
still, accident of intention.
Committed crazy peers demonstrating.

Train, trombone, singing buzzing lips,
desirous ruby red occupied by delirious
sensation. Purpose can never be
moving freight, going faster on bicycle,
differences not measurable.

Minute as to demand technology skills
beyond scope of naked human;
can't really be music Garnet Brown,
music machine one can see.
Bicycle floats through traffic

relative speed eludes cops,
dead man hopping on Cincinnati
eagerly falls off, searching way,
cinder lined coarse stone bones,
nuggets of stunted caution.

From pluck,
blind courage, fear and
crumbling wated years
hitchhiking the cosmos;
stealing cars with drivers.

AND LIKE ALL GOOD METAPHYSICAL POETRY IT IS A LOOP BACK TO "Mechanized age,"

Steven Paul Lansky

All Rights Reserved 1997

Copyright N. P. Lansky