Passing Love on Passing Trains

Last night on the way home from Big Day Out, I'd lost my friends and my phone had died, I had no ipod and no desire to converse with the drunken irish man on my train carriage so luckily my eye caught a poem printed and stuck on the wall. I really fell in love with it and almost memorized it by the time I got off the train. I wanted to share it...

Hurt Sonnet

I’m listening to Hurt, which Johnny Cash
now sings: the needle’s in his voice, a ghost
lends him its wings, and even with the clash
of everything that swings, I taste the host
of earth, its bitter taste that stings, the rash
that breaks the flesh with loss of love’s old things,
the never-ending aftermath of crash,
and, like an emblem of it all, the rings’
gold lying broken in the tarmac’s gash.
Because the no-one that you are must crack
in empire’s dirt that clings, time wields its lash
to seal your gaping’s hole with sightless black.
The tunings of those keys and strings unbinds
his voice to disappear in other minds.

Justin Clemens