TRAIN Part I

Come now, come burn with me, halfway from common

Shaman be robot prepared. Why are you so scared man,

you�re a beautiful bird, but they got you so dirty,

polluted your feathers and hair. Father�s not there,

He went to 16th and Mission looking for you before it

got dark. Ten minutes ago you were skipping across

Divisidero between upper and lower Haight . You faked

the rebate. You didn�t have a faded face. Their walls

are whitewashed, their stairs are marble blotched.

You say fuck a lock when the key busts into three

pieces. You are cold. You didn�t protect your neck.

You cut off the sleeves to keep, and realize you made

the best vest. You have to go home and rest, you

don�t take any steps. You look within to meditate,

self actualize, and manifest. As the mantras unfolded

you feel bliss hydrate through your parched lips. You

are blessed. Peace and happiness resonates through

your sacrum up through your chest. This is it. This

just is. You�re not the first to realize it, but it is

the first time you have realized it. The busy corner

wisps the biz at every kid.

He works alone with his guitar and smiles, under the

freeway overpass, playing tunes for cars with their

windows down as they stop in this halfway town for

gas.

Your BMX marks the grass as your tires race snakes to

the train tracks. There�s always strangers between

your room and the kitchen. They leave you peanut

butter and jelly with watered down vegetables in

exchange for directions. At your entry way, there is a

reception desk. The tiles are a black and white

oversized chess board. There is a stage and a pole in

the front room, and a window and a door to a warm pool

on the other side of your room. You live between a

strip club, and sauna. You throw a benefit for your

trip south here. Three bands come, there wasn�t room

for yours, they left you out.

You�re on the Train. It�s going so fast, your stomach

begins to cramp. With every turn of the tracks you can

feel the wheels react. You�ve got the gift, they say.

What is where and what is what? On what and where are

you going to focus the power of your energy, they ask

you frequently. To focus: does that not then mean

ignoring broadly the things that are not at the other

end of the slender scope in which your visions fall.

Women are not objects. Women are not designed for one

particular thing, women are not designed at all. We

humans are spirits occupying fluid clumps of matter we

call a body. This body is tangible. Our body�s are

host to our spirits.

And my spirit is jolted. I am reminded my host is

inside of a moving metal frame called a train.

Interchangeable human coordinates. Coal in the

motive�s local furnace. I am now you, and you are now

me. Come down now, from the watchtower your ego has

not allowed you to see. Snapping into a transit your

feet never, your feet never allowed you to be. And we

look up. We are going so fast, we can see the wheels

through the steel floor, steel screeching on the steel

tracks. Perhaps a roller coaster could never feel this

fast. Steel and vast, the sky is not yet dark. The

ribs of the intricate bridge in which we are crossing,

show black against the triangles of a glowing sky. I

see the open ocean�s river mouth through the stout

slats which support the bridges tracks, which support

the train, which support us. At blasting reality

snapped last, we halt the hall, heads fall back

bobbling wholly intact.

Throb throbbing, some rob themselves a ride. You,

however, just found yourself on. You found on to be a

wand. On found you all along. And so on you�re on,

at a stable, where the horses gallop into flight. But

there are no dust particles on this particular dusk,

The horizon was flush with the three of us.

Your Pa went looking for you at 16th and Mission,

heard you are a poet.

He�d call home from work and ask you how to spell

words they didn�t have in spell check. Half the time

he�d ask you to spell um� correct, ask you if you

checked, you�d say yes, while Webster stayed closed on

the desk. Ain�t phonetics a stress for a country boy

in a cubicle.

On April fools, your mom told you to call him at work

and confess that you broke his lazy boy, and it was

stuck permanently in the recline position. He said

he�d call 1-800- BUST-A-BUTT and he won�t be calm when

he gets home. You said it was April Fools, he said

April fools, and you rarely got whipped after that.

Papaw was wiped out from a day�s work of cuttin�

tobaccie . Cud chews from his own pouch. The cows

grazed sun up to sun down. �Son put that spoon down,

Gracie hasn�t said grace yet. There�s gristle on your

plate, but you want more biscuits. You know you�ll

get a whoopin if you put it down for the dog to lick

it. Mama w�d tell you what to do, but could never help

you. So your homework was always left up to you.

And now she slides the T.V. changer along with her lipstick into her makeup pouch,

slides to the furnace and

says her feet never get warm anymore.

My how you love her chocolate pie, but this�ll be the last time

she bakes, as your mother writes down what she does.

She�s fading fast, but holds on. Your dad�s cursing,

swares this is the last time, and you�re digging frantically

through the cushions of the floral print couch.

Your mom works nights, dad serves up a can

of split pea soup and your brother can�t handle it.

Your dad drags him by the arm into the hallway

where he takes his belt off. your brother comes back

to the table and finishes his soup, and immediately begins

puking and doesn�t stop for a week. He tends to get sick

every couple of months after that. Your mother feeds him

whatever he wants, including your strawberries. You were

to be named Berry Joshua, you came out with a vagina.

Your brother became a pilot, and you became a poet.

Now your both flying.


TRAIN Part II

So your dad�s out looking for you on 16th and Mission.

Heard they told you to keep writin�. Didn�t we all have missions

at sixteen. There are 16 junkies with one mission, and we

can�t fix everything. An opened can of belly knots spills on top

of spilled taught clot clothes and they soak together, spoken to

the laws of the land. And your father Reaches out his hand.

His vision begins to blur as the tears are tired of the stir,

and they come up to ease the burn of the breeze. And he

reaches out his hand to the side swayed palm tree. And he

will not find you here.

You are looking for him at the stable where it is

not yet dusk, and horses gallop into flight. Looking into the same

horizon from east to west, west to east. There is one horse

teathered there, wild as the salty wind of a dimly lit friend.

There are leather flaps over his eyes, cutting his sight

from flight. I see him, leaping at me, black as night.

This beautiful beast knishes his donkey teeth,

and you jump back. The rope is longer than you thought.

He grazes your cheek, sweat soaked whiskers leave the side

of your face wet before you stumble back. Your brother

wants to leave to the coffee shop, but you are drawn

to the horse. You stand there in shock as he, teathered,

continues trying to leap off. You find yourself here.

Your dad found himself in your space.

Genetics on the train cross syncopate through time,

and a climbing switch has occurred. You and your brother

jump the ditch together, and find what they said to be true.

Blood sticks like glue.

Everywhere you go, you find yourself holding

other people�s dirty syringes with the tips bent, looking

down at the death device, thinking of kid�s ecstatic faces.

City flowerbeds bore bark dust and spores. Up and down

hills biking with your brother.

And the police are after you again. You fly

through the bar, and lock yourself in the porta-potty in the

back. All the middle aged, Sunday brunch crowd of bar flys

file in silently to wait in line, and you are squeezing the shits out.

There�s ten porta-potties outside, Enough for each person in line .

You remind them that you�re taking a shit, and they cram out.

One lady, your mother�s age stays and tells you everything�s

going to be okay. She tells you that you don�t need to smoke

two Nat Sherman cigarettes simultaneously sipping hot

chocolate before you go on stage, nor is a sliding board platform

meant for bowling ball debate and delay, that gravity

will have her way, and you can�t lock the zombies out,

they don�t work well with doors, and there will always be

crack pipes brought to your childhood home, forcing you

to jump out of your parents bedroom window. She

reminds you that even in a porta-potty, outside a bar,

on the hill of bumfuck nowhere, hiding from the police,

having left your bike out as a dead give away,

streetlight dim through the blue plastic, squeezing out

yesterdays zucchini and tabouli, having done nothing wrong,

missing your brother is not a crime. Your dad will find

the essence of you in the community of your friends.

You will find yourself in him, in the horse unteathered

out of the stable as you untie the eye flaps. Hugging the sky,

there�s a place for you on the bridge in this train ride of life,

and it will never be dark, with all the infinite possibilities of dusk.

And you, squeezing it off, say �FUCK.� And

remember the sea lion laying dead on the Peresidio

wild life reserve beach dreaming of the caves

on the other side, and his jaw line is being cut, blood milky

on his eye, wondering if his teeth are more valuable than his life,

as the man crashes past his blubber with his dull pocket knife.

And the two pigeons dead in the mission that you put under

a tree because the sidewalk is no place for bloody feathers.

But often times the sidewalk finds feathers bloody.