Train to Chicago

A Poem by Alvah Goldbook

The train stops and I’m in the woods: waiting for the wolves to come. As the thought comes—passes with the sudden movement: away from the tops of trees, onto the hues of city lights.

            A tree rolls by. Then a puddle, a person, an infinity of telephone poles and street lamps and colors, gray in every shade. Frost, fog and my cheek, numb on the window.

            Parades emerge—coughs and whoops: slide into chairs, escaping out narrow doors. I stare at the colored people out on winter ribbon nouns—walking into shops, leaving under weights of clocks.

            A baby scream, an old man dies—I close my eyes. A lover sings, a beggar collects—I close my eyes. The wind roars, the shadows I adore, the man next to me snores and my mental chores keep me busy when I’ll alone. A grrr and brrr: the trains heart skips a beat, runs over busy streets and I hope for a crash.

A blister ticks my brow, so I open to stare: a mother sunk dread, in a mattress spring—out of life. Her children tick and talk and pull her downward eyelash hairs. They kick and lick: metallic keyboard sticks.

And I give it time: a halo shine, a polished smile a last. She hums a far away tune, sang personally for the moon for a light to her chest. A prayer, a sigh and her stop arrives—I close my eyes—I hum a tune.

The man in the box with swore teeth empties the bins of consumption in traces of delirium, psychosis, bewildered in black features, hollow structures, the howl from the hum of the nuclear-powered Burger King sign.

            Sea-shells beat the drums, pull down the night sky, using telepathic strings attached by thin necks, swollen jugulars that fold over and keep in place my dream-states.

            Uptown scars send silver stars, down streams and rivers of her cheek, buried in the center of a tear and rolls backwards down my spine.

            The tightest fit I could imagine—white blood cells scream in metal-vocalizations, for milk stains on clammy palms, blood spots that dance in the microstructures of fluids.

            And Marijuana smoke fights back, hurls paint and assorted buttons, empting the fill, which reaches and spills over. Bubbles on my tongue pulse in coordinated pops, releasing nitroglycerin and light reflections that make me sneeze.