In Front Of A Smoking Train

I ran up the steeple and smashed through the window,
I splashed into the sky like a high flying crescendo
my heart it barked, I whistled down, the sky sizzled as if branded
I heard the sound of a cars spark and it caught me before I landed
the driver turned around Bud red in the face laughing he roared
with one smoking hand on the wheel and sideways boot on the board
I said “take me down the road a ways” he said “what do you mean,
I thought we were going to the doctor’s place to finish this whole dream”
I elbowed open the door and dove over the guardrail
rolling down a cove I flung up like a Tar Heel
spinning in the air my hands shot out in a brilliant transition
from rolling with fierce speed to floating in position
then I zig-zagged back to the water like a Forrest Gump feather
saying if your heart is a ship then your mind is the weather.

The city was sneering back at me with a sinking stink face
the cheerleader was scratching her acne with a waving pink lace
the smoke stacks hissed and hacking as the kettle drums marched
the wheel chairs were street legal and the bubble blowers were parched
the river washed off the garbage and the sky was carefully set
with a yellow and blue gas burning sun, one that was barely lit
the governor cuts down the dusty drag and the juggler struts through a tent
he traded his balls for a custody tax but neither knew quite what it meant.
How can the seagull get fat off the land and the hobo dry up in the gutter
when the grand land of the bread winners hand uses the rest of the world like butter?
and a symphony somewhere far off plays silver strings a mile long
but we’ve got infinite ways to wink in the face of the most microscopic of songs.
We are the folks that buy the hoax our diet Cokes and grins.
We cracks are jokes like egg yolks and beat on the one that wins.

Just then my leaf buckled, I chuckled and sank into the folds of sea
dripping like a honey suckle I was a curious delirious bee
rage shook the four winds and panic set in the face of the witches
a piercing blurting empty emergency alerting vacuum burning with glitches
soaring out a wounded chorus the daughters Doris rang ‘til their eyes were fixed
and the mothers stirred their porridge staring worriedly through the mix
“how did the boy get back in the batch!”, asked a mad chap falling lame
“didn’t he learn no one’s returned from the place in which they came.”
my eyes went blank and sound it sank into a ice cold shimmering silence
farther and farther away I floated fleeing from dying islands
until nothing sweet nothing, pillowy snow billowing slowly, loafing towards no end
I kicked up my feet, put a stem in my teeth and made fire engine noises around the bend
townspeople in heels, outrun by the wheels, threw dandelions into the wind’s fist.
Every one missed.
On the track stood a girl, she pulled the slack in her curl, laughing, she blew me a kiss.