Alone on the train.

Alone on the train
Writing my first poem by phone
Feeling uneasy thinking I've missed my stop

Just because I wrote it doesn't make it real

The motion eats at a different corner of the brain

Having two thumbs

The letters between my hands

Train Talk Blues II

V
Oh, these buses?
they won't last,
automobiles had its day,
where's my replacement?

VI
File these thoughts
     under security office flags

VII
All of your precious iced coffees
are brewed in water
I can tell because they've
retained the
taste.

8
Eight infinity chain link
walking upright, evolutionary
can't get going
I'm without a ticket--a pariah,
weakest link--
     you or me?

Train Talk Blues I

I

Man waiting on blue bus
--what's that on your phone

II

five of us waiting

stand-by,

who makes it?

III

If your bag's unattended!

Check that ID!

III.1

Check the time,

bet hours moving quicker now,

it'll be 12 before sun up,

IV

Orange vest,

baggage checks,

20 bucks extra for two.

Man, I gotta GO!

Image of Adirondack
space is a spectre of loss to me--
of my soul--where should I
be--Oh, Jack
why'd they take
your notebooks
away
in mexico?--at Braddock
Road like any other NoVA
road, green & gray & peels off into
vast, not quite so southern
distances--anywhere but
here is my demon howling--
but I'm forged to
forget these ramblings--
cursed and immovable.

Go Go Go

New Jersey lies

foggy and mysterious

across the blue mighty

Delaware this afternoon,

like some foreign land

of Avalon beyond the shore--

trees are greener today, lush

with warm breezes,

water as clear as the 

sky and tumbling out of heaven,

my bus is nearly empty 

and the great road groans,

crashes, moans, and gapes

south,

I follow it along

going going going

non-stop

I'm certain that

there is nothing sadder
than a suitcase and
the inevitable pieces of
myself that I leave behind
to harden, dry out
and crack its wheels.

I've spent the last
four years of my life
leaving someone behind.

An update to today

Nothing seems more right
then reading Bukowski while taking
a shit; and why do all the little
girls in Chinatown wear purple
winter coats? Yesterday I slept,
woke up, got a bus, slept, found you
sleepy and sick in your bed, slept,
dreamt I was Apocalypse coming to usher
in the end of the world, I reveled in that
thought, the end, the beginning, death and
life and all that, I was in a theatre, someone
had written a musical about my godlike feats,
I watched it from the balcony VIP, but I couldn't remember
her name, I called her Ashley and was wrong,
woke up had dinner, a cold turkey sandwich
from 7-11 (Joe would be proud) then turned in
for the night with you coughing and wheezing, and
me feeling you up,
I am sorry
I left for the night
into my running head
to nothing
and now I'll leave Bukowski
in the bathroom for you to find and ask
why?
So I can laugh and we
can go to
bed together
because it makes sense

Visions of Chinatown

"Mommy, are we in China?"
says the cute little girl in
purple flannel patterned winter
jacket,
as her mother buttons up her hood,
"No baby, we in Philly," and
they're looking for something to eat
that isn't this rundown dirty tiled
bus station, while they await the two
hour trip to New York where their
cousin will pick them up, I overheard
when she was using some guys
phone (he had two for some reason, took one
out of his pocket for her to call, he must carry on
in case strangers ask for his phone;
he thinks ahead)
wearing a button down and a sweater
over top, it was purple too,
I thought that was kind of a funny
coincidence, while I waited and then a
green vested guy called, "New York bus,
New York bus, outside!" and everybody
ambled out to fight for a spot in line,
except me and a loving couple sharing
their lunch, until I realized it was too small
containers not one, so they weren't sharing,
They were huddled together tho,
and that's something,
I guessed they were headed to DC
too, or maybe they didn't care about getting
to New York on time,
either way we'd sit across from each other
saying nothing

cute little love poem

Sometimes sitting by your side
I become enamored with the world
but lose my sense of it, I walk away
without a thought or memory of
what I saw, what color were the trees,
what did you say to me as we tripped
over uneven sidewalks, how bright was
the afternoon sky, were there clouds to shade
our eyes? Sometimes leaving you
numbs me until I stare out moving windows
for 3 hours without a word, sometimes I wonder
if you feel it too, sometimes I pretend these
wheels are traveling back to you

Roading

The road travels by itself in
its own fourth dimensional brawl
and soon I'll be on to it
learning how the trees find other things to
wrap their colorful orange leaves,

Soon, I'll be caught up in the
immemorial valleys of the American spirit
soon we'll be those American heroes
we've lost,

soon, we'll bathe in the
muddy Mississippi baptized
in it's heavy old currents and
cleanse our modern lost souls

A Supplication; The Road

I can't write poetry anymore
if I'm not on the road going
somewhere taken by wheels somewhere
on the great roads of America
under that purely American sky
that blankets our whole land-that we take for granted-
under it's breast, leaves us in mouth open awe and kids
go "Whooooo-" and I do too-
until I get looks like I'm crazy
walking from the bus stop in a
new city south going just to prove America
is red/white/blue eternal with god watching over, so
I can see its soul
Which is all our souls
stretched out like white clouds and
heavy--

And I think there's no
other land like ours that
makes you bleed like it does and
love like it does, the girls all over think
we're mad, so maybe we are--

But it's green lovely holy trees
skitter-scatter and I see into that soul that encompasses
our history and I find myself inside it--and I breathe
deep and love like a child running through fields
of empty madness,

How I hear those roads calling!
How I feel those wheels whispering!

Ghosts stretch south
on my pencil sketch
the ghost of the west and
America blares as it always has
eternally golden toward the Rockies
the Pacific wide Texas plain and Arizona desert sun beyond,
and looking back when I get THERE for the cold Atlantic coast--

it's all there for me--
waiting for me
someday--
to catch up to it.

Hyattesville Green

Collar raise
no bandana t'hold it up
red starch white mark dancing flower
book open hardbound pop-
(street cap) next to--

The Lost Symbol Dr. Sax

--mine
wit the state of
just about metal wheel
grinding in that oldtime 1920s
cable car electric car
juggling after work daylight-
sleep sleep sheep wool
ah, limp longing caress
the time lump

between here & there's
(n's many rails
                      laid down)
a green-line train
switching tracks above ground Ft Totten
on to Hyattesville bound Maryland--

I intend to catch
this drudging loneliness home

carry on on on--

We all love our own words
and I wrote this memory for you
silently nowhere, cause I can't
get down outta my head what I don't know-
and others-
they got other hang ups on words too,
that I can't fathom, anyway-
in line like a- but somebody else
got that word I'm lookin for,
I can't have it like bags grayed on
roadside diner sidewalks
and green lights vanished.

Best Western

There's a pear
leans against a vase
green-red ripe
flowers blended
maroon impression.
Who paints the water
Baltimore?

Construction on I95? Sure I'm down

The gasoline orange-yellow sun
awakens over tired pilots
sipping coffee
and phasing out
the low hum of a song
carried over radio waves
to work stations
and mistranslated lives,

the one perpetual failure of man
is the north bound bridge on I95
running over the Girard Point Bridge,

Old graying war machines rest
tired underneath, a slumber forced
upon aging metal bones,
in pretend-memory
full of vigor and violence,
now slouched into creaking recliners
and stuffed with catheters,
waiting for unrecognizable dinners
and sunset futures.

Speed Radar Enforced

Elitist, Enforce, Enable

e words
beginning with e,
ending with e,
e e e e e e-----

then the car convulses
the bodies drop below,

it's summer meaningless--

she picks the flower off the ground
yesterday
or tomorrow
her hand prepared and waiting today,
in a flash
speed and metal coalesce
into a blurry nothing blur-

words splash forth
pelting windows and eyes,
sleepy doe-eyed eyes
twisting like spaghetti
in preformed plastic bowls,
words splash forth

the street is coated endless-
ly-

with the common vowel
and the police watch lazy
and silent\\\\\\

from some far off place
as chaos reigns/////

blasting sound waves
into oncoming traffic

Trav-elling-with-the-air-as-your-guide

Travelling, dust on our/your back,

to your back, kicking up,

over, beyond, side-ways,

scrolling and marching

forward, you've been forewarned...
before--this--

so, Cool and lazy, the river flows

by us/you, non-existent restraint,

the air/wind restraining,

pulling back, peeling back,

a figure walking toward her,

running backward and running away,

running out of the light,

afraid,

of jet engines heating up,

displacing energy, gliding on currents,

tons of metal/plastic, simple,
primordial like a bird weightless and weighted down,

pulled down by the earth, straining higher,

wind sweeping through the past, 

the recent past, the myth of present

toys with her,

we could watch from inside-out,

from dreams and reality,

a star sparking, blinking

yes and no.

I bought this new text book of walking history and it taught my students to mix water and concrete

The soil is weightless,
yet the trees form concrete walls,
a quiet liminality exposed,
past bleeds into present
clean air and the rumble of the automobile,

Thundering silence
and we shouldn't be here,
though we need to be;

understand or forget.
to ignore, and crucify
the steady beat of identity,
fragile and benign,

clouds heavy with rain
beating down,
a memorial hastily constructed,
following the bend and curve of road and river;

the discourse of commercial markets pursued, 
a discipline of asphalt and ignorance,
governments and private wealth,
a history of interstate highways,
walmarts, shopping malls, and
supermarkets to worship
and write about in circular ads.
the new history,
the new past,
heroes and gods
barely perceptible
a new identity dissolves.