mad dogs

[saw]

nobody really gets his poetry
or anyone's for that matter
readers too often pay too much
attention
to the words
miss the locomotive
bearing down on them
like a Hitchcock movie
sure you know it's coming
but that's not it,
it's what happens before that
that chaotic trip down the tracks
the guttural rumbling mechanics
of pure rolling unhinged power
the shower of hot steel sparks
flying from un-greased metal rails,
the curling bootblack smoke,
that's what makes you uneasy
and then your hooked
so you sit tight waiting for the killer
to strike again, but
he takes his good old time,
oh the mad dogs
the mad dogs, they keep us
on the edge of the edge of our seats
they write the poems
that make us shriek

[dadio]

you have hit it on the head and done so well.

[mnaz]

"mad dogs and englishmen"...

i thought of hitchcock right off, before i got to his name. right about at that "miss the locomotive bearing down" bit...

read up a little on noel coward, who wrote the "mad dogs" song. yikes.

"mad dogs and englishmen go out in the midday sun..." well, no wonder ed abbey put that song in his book...

(pardon my ramble)

[the mingo]

[saw]

thanx alot dadio...and mnazzy, yes noel coward was a maniac....no one will ever convince me he wrote that song straight......he hadda be sniffing something...

one of my favorite lines, "Englishmen detest a siesta".........

and I was thinking of the Hitchcock movie, Strangers on a Train when I wrote the poem....the opening with the train bearing down on some little town, the black smoke belching from the stacks, then cutaway to Joseph Cotton lying in bed smoking a cigar, the rings of smoke so ominous, then back to the train....on & on......good stuff.....