Poetry By Ian Lewis Copestick

​The Trains

I worked for 5 long years
Nights in a cardboard box factory
Long, long nights of pain and sweat
The machines never stopped
You had to work really hard
To keep up with them
If you ever hit the stop button
The supervisor would come
Down from his office
And want to know why

Outside the factory doors
Where we had to stand to smoke
A train track ran straight past
On my 4 'O'Clock break
I would stand there
Cigarette in hand staring
Staring
Staring
At the trains
Dreaming about the people
And where they were going
I didn't know if they were
Heading North or South
They could have been going
To London or Edinburgh
I didn't really care
All that much
They were always just
Going away
And that seemed good enough
For me
Away from sweat and pain
And long, long nights
In a factory
Away from cardboard fucking boxes
And
Always
Away
From me

​

Bio: Ian Lewis Copestick is a 45 year old poet from Stoke On Trent England. Although he has a long history of addiction issues, he hates the thought of being defined by it. He started writing poetry about 15 years ago after discovering Bukowski and being hit by the revelation that working class people CAN be poets.

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