Whoops. I saw this photograph here as an intended inspiration and had run with it before I read the fine print and discovered that it was supposed to be a tanka. Whatever that means.
I don’t really know how murder got into it but, you know, these things happen …
***
I’m hearing helter-skelter
Hearing clickety clack
Hearing metal wheels screaming
On a railway track
The whistle is a blowing
We’re racing with the wind
I don’t know where we’re going
But I know that I have sinned
Shackles on my ankles
Chains upon my wrists
They can’t control my thinking
But they can control my fists
I’m going down for murder
Going to pay for my mistake
There’s a guy and he was laughing
There’s a body in the lake
I don’t regret what I have done
I’d do it all again
I slit his throat, I watched him drown
He wasn’t laughing then
He was messing with my woman
Then confessing what he’d done
He thought I’d like to hear it
He thought it might be fun
I had a little fun with him
I cut him with my knife
I watched his body sinking
Then I went and did his wife
And now it’s helter skelter
There weren’t no bags to pack
We do the crime, we do the time
I ain’t coming back
***
Richmond Road 
I’m glad you posted it. I’ve also wrote something that I ended up going on too long and the prompter berated me. So naturally I just blocked her.
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That’s the spirit!
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oh my dear man.
when you run with something you’re like a dog with a new chew stick.
This is what poetry is supposed to be.
Tell me the truth, did you just start writing lines, and somewhere near the end think
“omg what do I do now oh, there’s the ending…”
I love the way this progresses from a train to a murder to an ending…
Bravo, bravo, bravo
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My problem is that I seriously lack concentration and persistence, so I write anything that comes into my head without any sort of plan. And then, unless there’s a glaring error that absolutely screams at me, I post it. That’s why everything looks a bit like a ‘work in progress’ except that there’s hardly any work and no real progress.
In this one I was trying to capture the motion and feel of an old train and suddenly I had blood on my hands. Beats me.
It wasn’t a tanka though, I’m fairly sure about that.
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I don’t care what “literary style” title this falls under, I only know it’s good and I like it!
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careful, he’s having an aw shucks it ain’t nothin’ moment and no amount of praise will break into it. (deep sigh)
This is exactly the way I write, you start with a first line, and keep going, dead sure you’re gonna drop the ball this time, and suddenly there’s the ending, just like that train, and there’s the poem. I don’t know how it works either, but its quite an adventure. and not all that uncommon.
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I do wish, Judy, that I could really focus on these things a bit longer. My poor attention span is getting worse.
But this weekend is the NYC Midnight Challenge – and that somehow focuses me for a bit, despite consistent failure.
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