The Train Stops Here: Gus’ Gnu Poems

By Al Ferber

Gus has been throwing the towel in out and about since 1978. Walks, runs, crawls, and creeps about. Reporting, observing, surmising, events, real & imagined, recording dreams, visions & hallucinations out of whack with every norm. Always been a bad bet to invite to a wine & cheese party. A stalwart enemy of convention, especially conventional poetry.
This collection is Gus in the extreme.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796088038

Al Ferber

Al Ferber a septuagenerian going on 13. Born. Regrettably… A North Philly kid. Survived education at Temple U., Penn State, Villanova U. Alcoholic 30 years. Sober 23 years. Indenture servant to Catherine the Great 34 years. Learned to love and appreciate cats and one dog. Authored 30 books of poems, 2 novels, 3 chap books. Poems in Magazines in U.S., England, Scotland, France. Still alive, on the downward path of the sliding board, as of this writing. An undocumented alien in the world. Resides Ocean City, NJ surrounded by water with Cathi, Luna, Mitzi, and Opal. So there.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Al Ferber.

ISBN:                  Softcover                        978-1-7960-8799-4

                            eBook                             978-1-7960-8803-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/12/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

809386

For Cathi

my wife, best friend

& sparring partner

who thinks

Gus & his author have

a few screws loose

and

Hop Weschler

good friend &

Gus’ biographer

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Cover Art by Al Ferber 2020

All poems contained herein were previously published in the pages of the Literary & Arts e-zine:

The Irregular Gnusletter Issues

40 through 93

Printed here with permission of Editor & Publisher:

Al Ferber

INTRODUCTION

Some trains are bound for glory.

But some trains aren’t.

Some trains keep a-rollin’ all night long.

But some trains don’t.

Some trains have the disappearing railroad blues.

Some trains don’t run on time.

Some trains stop.

Really, it’s all up to the conductor.

A poem is just words, but enough words are a road map, and beneath a road map is a road. Dean Moriarty once said that the road must eventually lead to the whole world. And Sal Paradise said there was nothing to talk about any more. The only thing to do was go. So we went. And this is where we ended up.

Al Ferber has been here since the avalanche began back in 2000. (In fact, he was here before that, with Gus: Biographical Notes of a Part Time Alter Ego in 1994 and, even before that, with Inventory in the Badlands, courtesy of a now-defunct chapbook publisher in Isle of Skye, Scotland, in 1986. 1986! Fawn Hall was but a wee lass of 27. But I digress.)

The Train Stops Here, Gus said, but it doesn’t. 24 books of poetry. One memoir(ish), Diamonds in the Rough. One novel, Beatitudes, which one might also refer to (I would) as Off the Road.

More recently, a weekly(ish) e-newsletter, officially known as the Gnusletter, featuring poems (Gus and non-Gus), paintings, and (naturally) stock photos of gnus. And now this anthology, a collected works from Volumes 40 through 93 of the Gnusletter, some of which are published, some of which have yet to publish. In other words, dear reader, they are gnu to you.

When I am asleep, when you are asleep (unless perhaps you are in Tokyo, but probably even then), Al Ferber is awake. Even when Al Ferber is asleep, Al Ferber is awake. What he’s doing, and to whom, is anyone’s guess, but if I had to guess, he’s writing.

He’s writing about dream girls and women of the night. He’s writing about Billy Bagadonuts and the Duke of Earl. He’s writing about bleak horizons and Rising Suns. He’s probably writing about you, if he knows you, and also if he doesn’t.

And when the train stops (not that it ever does), when the train takes so much as a five-minute break to rustle up a new pack of smokes or take a frickin’ piss, you’re on your own. No Buddha, no sherpa, no road map, no road. Find your own way home.

And I heard that lonesome whistle blow, and it blew for thee.

Hop Weschler

CONTENTS

The Train Stops Here

What Kinda Day

Disconnects From Retro-Plasticity

The Rubicon

Brain Quakes

The 4th Of Tuesday

The 75th Of November

The 8th Of Saturday

The 4th Of Thursday

The 19th Of Wednesday

The 2nd Of Sunday

January Of Summer

February Misconstrued

The 39th Of June

August In Retrograde

October In Stalingrad

45th Of November

March Of Linear Equifax

39th Of May

July Of Hoarfrost

53rd December

Everything

Let’s Get Lost

Chaos

Sunspots On A Bleak Horizon

Death Of A Servant

She’s A Road Runner

Clothes Lines

12:01 To 4:30 Or 5:00 Am

Blood In The Sandbox

Shadow Land

World Of Whispers

With Loneliness Comes Freedom

Mayday Mayday

Cluster Fuck

Recompence

Play It. Play It.

In The Numbers

Low Hanging Fruit

Dog Eared

Things Be Dangerous

Run Silent / Don’t Pee

Temptress

Renege

Enemy Within

Rolling Stone / No Dice

Take The Fall

Snap Crackle

Almost & Forever Lost

Next Subway Platform

Puncture All Balloons

The Real Queen Of Wonderland

Submerging

Abortion

Circus Land

Big Top

Bloomsday Boy

Deep Faith

Whirlpool

The Bonfire

Death Valley

Side Roads & Wrong Turns

Aesop’s Foibles

The Bagadonuts File

Social Skills

Draft Evasion

Fall From Grace

In The Wake Of Hippiedom

Billy’s Bill Comes Due

Behavioral Modification

Caged Birds

Eroticism As A Remedy For Death

Rat Race

Pants

Quality Time

Restless

The World Won’t

In The City

The Shadows Of Ghosts

Cheap Thrill

Lightning

Kicking Ass On The Golden Mile

Unleashed

The Theaters Went Dark

Shifting Shelving

Along The Way

Fireflies

In Touch

The Meat Slicer

Recidivist

Low Brow

2 Cents

Through The Village

Pick Up Sticks

Non-Specific

Cages

Dreams Girls

Euphoric Moment

Hygge

The Sun Of Thunder

Forsworn

Low Winter Sun

Winter’s Bones

The Gravity Of The Deal

‘Tis The Season

3 Of 2 On A Half Split

Cut In Quarters

The Emperor Of Ice Cream

Day Of Reckoning

While She Slept

Beyond The Grasp

Pennsauken Mart, Etc.

Life Of Infamy

City In Flames

Mushroom Trees

Empathy

Reduction Production Reduction…

Sometimes Some Times

It Just Blew Up

Losing You

The Malingerer

Heated Breath

Sweet N Sour

Realm Of Experience

Well Enough

Murmuring

Seriously

Reflections In Windows

Same Tree

Blood & Paper

Spilt Milk

Seek Further Up The Mountain

Frij In The Forest

Beads

Empty Bag

The Pillager Of Gno

Beneath Nothing

The Last Phone Booth

Jeezes Crise N Aphrodite

Stubble

Flash Floods

The Gulag, Etc.

All Shook Up

Decided To Live

Humans In Close Proximity

Three Ring Circus

The Broken Boat

String Theory

Grandmother Nomad

Let’s Just Say

Asymmetrical

The Demons Come For Everyone

Artificial Intelligence

Zero Sum

Exaggerated

Blood In The Rain

Buddha Shit

River Gulch

Bloom

Bandidos Without Borders

Who Gets Around

Dreams Are Shit

Paris N New York

Backdrop

No Wonder

Speedway

A Season In Hell

The Wind

Before The Boat Went Down

The Rain

Yellow

Ba Ha Ha

Outland

Parliament

Prison Papers # 10

Into The Dark

Recipe For Disaster

This Just In

Out Of The Game

Witches East

Albanian Mysticism Revisited

Pheromones

Annual Confluence

Walls Fences Gates Webbs Bars N Barbs

Repatriation

Almost Grounded

Different Sphere

Garbage Pickers

Miles Of The Streets

Salvador

Stirring The Pot

The Train Stops Here Not There

Crawling Out

Tired

Between The Raindrops

Rainbow

Festival Of Lights

No Sense

The Day After Death

Tarnish

The Horror

The Framing Of Experience

One Disparate Piece At A Time

The Price Of Existence

Sunny Day At The Compound

The End Of The War

Soft Underbelly

The Ruins

Lane Changer

Mental Health

Venom In Her Heart

Dark River

Conquistadors Riding Mopeds

The Heat Of The Moment

The Curse Of Knowledge

From There To Here

About To Change

Bibliotek Of Accidents

By The Men’s Room Door

In The Wrong Direction

Magic Moments

Social Calendar

A Word From Inside The Gulag

The Enemy Within

None Of Us

Wild Dune Grass

High Tide

William S. Burroughs

Out In The Wilderness

Dance Through Hell

Specifics

The Pot N The Kettle

Get Down