Arthur or “the Stoned Train”

It was early summer in North Dakota, the morning air crisp and clear, cold
and brittle. Arthur was on his way from Seattle to Williston to visit his
Uncle Ray. Outside and over the monotonous grinding of the train upon its
tracks, Art imagined he could hear the chirping of birds and the buzz of
insects and he loved the way the country cycled past his window like cinema...

..a film that went on for hours and hours, hours and hours. By the time he
had left the dinning car that evening, dusk and given way to twilight and in a
matter of moments the movie would be over. Leaving only the sound track –
only the sound of the train tracks would remain.

His compartment slept two, but for now he had it all to himself. And that,
he thought, was wonderful for his imagination was his best company. Who’s
isn’t when they turn seventeen? So, with full stomach and full of
expectation: seeing his Uncle, Swimming in the lake, a summer of untold
delights – he fell off into a wonderful deep sleep.

The Train made a night stop just before the north west Badlands at Wolf
Point, Montana. Art never noticed. Rather, he slept straight through. Until
shortly after midnight when a cough and a clearing of the throat awakened
him. He sat up startled in his sleeper. He had a roommate! An older man
with a deep and penetrating look to his eyes and a demeanor, mysterious but
inviting.

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“Hello young man, my name is Rudy, I got on at Wolf Point, come from
Roundup, sorry I’ve awakened you.”

Art rubbed is face and scratched his head. “Oh, that’s OK mister, mister
Rudy, I was just about to get up anyway. Now there’s someone to talk to.
It’s been a long two days on this train.”

“My, that is a long trip. You’ve come from the coast then?

“Yep, Washington. I’m going to Stanton to visit my Uncle. And you?”

“Mystic. Mystic, Connecticut. To attend a conference – a conference of

Hypnotists.”

“Cool! Is that what you do? I’ve always wondered about that, you know, if
it’s real and how it works.”

“It works. In fact, you have a lot to tell, my new friend. Would you like to
try?”

“Sure!” Art slid from his bunk and took up a seat directly across the
compartment from Rudy. “Well how do we do it. Where do I start?”

Rudy began slowly and deliberately, his voice a resonant baritone. “By
looking deeply into my eyes and clearing your mind of all of your thoughts
and all of your feelings and everything you know, and by listening intently to
the sound of the train on the tracks and the noises in the car, and the sound
of my voice, and the rhythm of the movement of the car on the tracks, and
the tone of my voice as it blends with sound of the train in the night, and by
imagining a vocabulary of colors, of light and shadow, and the sound of my
voice, and...”

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Seventy seven seconds later Art was stupefied in trance. But Rudy had
other intentions. He had sensed he was in the company of a great Poet. But
who? His intentions were to force a channeling. “How old are you?”

Art’s voice changed, still youthful but more deliberate and somewhat absent
in quality. “Dix-sept”.
“And do you know where you are?”

“Oui. Entre Charleville et Paris”.

“Can you speak English?”

“Six languages in all. Yes. Rather well I should think.”

“..and, if you would tell me then, who are you?”

“Arthur Jean Nicholas Rimbaud… ha, ha, and I have completed the drunken
boat so I can ride the stoned train, and I have lost my opium, an epiphany! I
am the avatar! I know the color of vowels. And I am off to see Verlaine.
We’re on the egg train. I will show you. Look! The egg train, the egg train!’

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…and who are you my good fellow?, or shall I tell you what I think? You are
blue and yellow, like fairies in the cupboards, like gunshots after vespers,
orange and lavender. And you profit from the telling of fortunes and by
mesmerizing persons, and you collect information from the very souls that
cling to our spoons, forks, knives!”

Arthur buried his face in the newspaper which was on the seat beside him.
Rudy was, well, taken aback. Flabbergasted! It was quite difficult for him to
gather his thoughts. He made a concerted effort but found himself looking
out the window for moment to clear his head. There was all together an
uncomfortable few minutes of silence.

The train rumbled on and on, and came upon a relative clearing following what
had been a long, long stretch of heavy forestation. Several men were
shooting in the copse, as if at target practice as opposed to hunting. And
Rudy turned to Art and said, “Arthur, please look outside your window and
tell me what you see there.”

“I see poetry. Pure Poetry.. I see a poem which I shall call the shot...

The Shot
I am a poet without a gun
Because I cannot shoot the
dark beyond the ledge –

A Marksman without target

Whose pointless dart greets

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Empty pointless air –

My pen, betrayed, cannot draw life

from the bottomless and empty well
of History and despair –

Because my hot mouth cannot find

the words the heart would tell.

And I have reached the edge –

Yet nothing left behind..
Poet without pistol, I’ve done
Everything and nothing that I care.

But I have never been unkind –

Sometimes reckless on a dare
Or wild and cruel as free men are
Who never return alone.

My revolver ready and my empty stare –

Abandoned in the field afar I shoot
The shooting stars till all are blind –
I leave not one unblown!

I am a Poet in oblivion!
Never to court, never to sit still –
Never to live, love, loot, die,

But on the ledge, bending to my will

My pen fires at the fabulous lie!

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And when the curtains close,
Without ammunition or supplies –
Illustrious! I march home weaker -
Fists in my torn pockets, bleeding nose.

The vital stories have at last begun –

I have become ideal, this narrow wrist
The instrument and I shall pose
As Speaker, Poet, Vicar. Any possible disguise.”

And no sooner had that disguise been spoken, then Arthur returned to his
paper and Rudy the window, while the train rolled on and on north of the
Badlands toward its next destination: Williston. There his uncle Ray would
meet him and they would travel south to Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

By the time the train approached Williston, the morning sun was fairly high
in the sky. It was a bright, beautiful morning. Still Rudy had not brought the
real Art back and began to wonder if he could, for Arthur, buried in the
paper and occasionally scribbling verses in the margin, never again looked up
at his companion.

Then, upon pulling into the station, Arthur stood and made his way toward
the exit, leaving all of Art’s possessions behind in the compartment. Indeed,
he took nothing with him as he rose. And seemingly deaf to Rudy’s adamant
objections, lost him in the crowd of people making their way toward the
door.

The door opened. The passengers exited. Rudy, frantic sought out Arthur
in the crowd to no avail. For he didn’t know Art’s Uncle Ray, but knew that if
he lost his subject, it might well be forever. And so it was.

Rudy stood on a bench to elevate his vantage point above the heads of the
crowd. Then, in a fleeting instant, disappearing into the landscaped park
beside the station...

His eye caught Arthur’s eye, who turned only this once to glance back for a

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singular moment... ..and he was gone.

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