Saturday, July 18, 2020

ONCE THE TRAIN HAS LEFT THE STATION


you're fucked
or liberated,
sometimes both;
having little choice
but to ride that sonofabitch
'til the next stop.
But once your body calms
to that existential delemma
a voice
is able
to snake through
the clickity-clack,
the grinding metal-on-metal lullaby,
the hip-hoppers & be-boppers,
wails of the crazed or soon to be,
and it's your voice,
faint as it may be
it's just loud enough
to elbow its way
to the front of your forehead
making you deaf to all other sounds
save this
and it's a memory
once distant, perhaps,
but now pulling on your mind's tit
like it's the only tit in town.
And you realize
just how parched you were
for this memory
just this memory
sour or sweet
matters less
than nothing.
All you know
is thirst.

And so you ride. You ride
with your mother's accusations
and your father's back of his hand;
or you ride with their warmth
and sensitivities to your needs;
you ride with the girl you have
or want to have; you ride
with your failures or conquests:
that brtoken-bat hit bottom of the ninth,
or buzzer-beater; you ride
with a slip of your tongue and a look
on the face of someone who loves you,
who would sooner harm themself,
with incredulity at your brazen cruelty
and of not realizing who you are sooner...
and then
the train
slows,
levers are pulled,
brakes hiss,
air emits,
& the next station announced,
but it's not your station;
in your heart of hearts
you really have no station;
and almost allow a laugh,
but that would smack too much
of melodrama, a cheap perfume
for the untalented, but still
there is time, you think, and so
you allow yourself to be teased,
to be jostled toward the door,
flirting with fucking with your mind's disorder
at the border between stops
but don't make it, instead finding
yourself a seat.

Then, without warning,
just as your ass is about
to meet the plastic cradle,
it leaves you, this memory,
but not before a wisp of its color
nestles in your flesh.
And there it will wait,
but not for long,
for others to join
on this pilgrimage
to the next stop
& the stop after
& the one after
that. And maybe,
just maybe
at the end
they'll be a rainbow
of memories
instead of the usual
flood of cul-de-sacs
awaiting the next
train ride
to somewhere
to do something
with someone
you have no memory
of now or
ever.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

1 comment:

  1. my comment may have vanished...i don't know. but this is fantastic. sorry it took so long to read it.

    ReplyDelete