I wonder how New Orleans is,

but I'm not kicking that rock over to find out. Not accepting fresh wounds.

I dug around and found a poemish thing I wrote on my pda on a train trip home on December 16th, 2004.

You know you care. C'mon. Don't be like that. Read my sad pda rambling...geesh... it's not brussel sprouts. Brussel sprouts are good for you, by the way, remember that.



+++++

train 59 to new orleans

i can ignore someone for 4.22 hours one way and 4.16 hours back again. and someone can ignore me the same amount of time.

i am the dumb one who sits on the train not in the seat number
but in the train number itself.
i am not the only one trying to sit in seat 59:
out of an entire empty car, a kid sits right next to me
all he has is a skateboard, backpack and CDs.

we all stood in the rain to board
instead of standing under the canopy
conductor asked why we were standing in rain 'like ducks'
i said 'we're standing in the rain like idiots'

you are sitting next to me on the train
you brought things to insulate yourself from me
i forgot to do that. i will forget next time, too.

i am in someone elses fugitive montage
i am the late one in the rain
you are sitting by me ignoring me
soaked

we have a lot in common.

i think i am that tree growing too close to the tracks,
stripped down and cleared now and then
i never grow back quite the same.

i didn't hear the question but I heard God answer:
'the foist thing you got to realize is that you lost. then, you go from there.'

God is a black man on a train to new orleans
sitting directly behind me in an empty car
with only us three.
i am the one feigning sleep
i am the one thinking about derailment
i am the one who carries a germ from them to you

and the world outside blurs by
pink and yellow ransacked skeletons with rusty tin rooves as a hat

i can tell i'm almost home.

someone's meadow lark lemon basketball is floating alone in a greened over drainage ditch.
people live here, i forget that.

'attention all passengers. someone has lost a ring in the restroom. they laid it down beside the washbasin. it has no monetary value, only intrinsic or sentimental value. '
does anyone stop to think that if you find a ring on a train, someone knows you have it.

the signs outside say 'holy city': black guy with his baseball cap backwards is riding a horse down the frontage road between us and a trailer park. people fascinate me.

nearly h@me.

when two trains pass each other going different directions,
its hard to tell which one is moving faster
or if one has stopped moving at all.

home.


+++++


See, that wasn't so bad. I don't totally suck at this. Softball, I suck at. This rambling thing is second nature, maybe even third. You care.