[John Whitworth]

The great British Train poems must be Auden's 'Night Mail' and two by Hardy, 'The Journeying Boy' and the one where he wishes he'd got off the train where the girl was on the platform. But, being Hardy, of course he didn't.

[Orwn Acra]

Because I can't write my own train poem, I'll share this one:

Thoughts on a Station Platform

It ought to be plain
how little you gain
by getting excited
and vexed.
You'll always be late
for the previous train
and always in time
for the next.

--Piet Hein

[FOsen]

Congratulations - John, your train poem is tremendous fun.

Frank

[Susan McLean]

Lovely clackety rhythm to your goods train, John.

Susan

[Seree Zohar]

Sorry John - hadn't noticed the request. Here y'go....
thanks all for the kudos. thank goodness it didn't need to rhyme!!

This is 139 characters. in twitterature the spaces, apostrophes etc are often left out but doing that in my entry wd make it even more utterly incomprehensible to the uninitiated. so here tis with spaces. Exegesis below heh

phat guy trying2 spread fud. nimby! imho hes a troll. not p2p fight. omg wywh 2save me. hes down. omg u did. aas tnx vm. im da king! 2g2bt! gotta psalm this1! cya l8r. david

PHAT guy trying to spread fear uncertainty and disinformation.
Not in my backyard!
In my humble opinion he's a troll. [this is] Not a peer to peer fight!
O, my God, I wish you were here to save me.
He's down!
O, my God, you did!
Alive and smiling thanks very much! I'm the king! Too good to be true! I’ve got to psalm this one! See you later. David.

PHAT has some 20 or so expansions but the general gist is ‘showoffy’ or ‘hot’ [as in, cool dude].

[John Whitworth]

Seree that is delightful. Thank you very much.

I once worked with a bloke, a Maths teacher, who was a plane spotter. His desk was surrounded by pictures of various planes types and their badges. If I happened to bump into him outdoors he'd often point to a passing plane, a microscopic speck high up in the sky that I could hardly see, and say things like "That's Singapore Airlines Flight 217 from Bangkok, ETA Sydney 1500 hrs, Pilot Captain Roland MacGillicuddy, an A360 type 2C model 010 slash B, serviced Kuala Lumpur on the third of May...." or some such arcana; and he wasn't joking. He and his chums used to stand around the perimeter of Sydney airport identifying and photographing every aviatory phenomenon possible. He's bring the shots to school and show them around. He was delirious when he learnt that my brother-in-law was pilot to some Gulf State royals, and I was very popular when I showed him photos and video of the Royal jet, complete with seat belted throne, king-size bed (also including belt) and khazi carrying the royal crest. With a bunch of fellow plane-spotters he would go off to some international airport overseas for an extended plane-watching session; this became much harder post-September 11th 2001. The plane-spotting band were detained at an American airport as they clicked away at their cameras, and though they were eventually released and told to bugger off, their plane-spotting was considerably reduced after that. I don't know if there are any plane-spotting poems, and I've never heard that it's code for any sort of drug-consumption.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I came way late to this but Yah Seree and John. I would love to see Seree's entry. Will it be public soon? Oh, I scrolled too fast. I see it now.

Brilliant. Wow. (of course she talks like this on a daily basis, so she's had lots of practice.