Train to The End
of The World
Metro
North platform like a wailing wall,
survivors
stand heads bowed waiting
for
the train to the end of the world.
Parking
lot now half-filled, yellow ribbons tied to antennae on cars
abandoned
by
commuters who never came home.
Crematorium
ash drifts uptown on a sour wind, the migraine that wouldn’t quit
the
bond trader back at her desk by 7 AM the next morning
gags
on a buttered roll.
Root
canal of city tooth labyrinth
Vicodin
sway trance across 7th Ave.
holding
my jaw in a numb jut.
I
hop the “N” 2 stops to 49th
Stare
at sheet music in Colony’s window
avoid
the office a few more minutes.
A
hollow echo down the tube
as
the falling column roars
here
I am boarding the train to the end of the world.
The
PATH is rough, flooded and treacherous
fly
a flag, wave a knife, steal a plane, sift gray mud for body parts
busy
desk a mountain of rubble, recession’s blinders on
Will
I reach the promised land with my children?
Will
I accomplish the deed, thought, word, voice of peace and security?
Will
the tassel be torn from my shoe, jammed under the
opposing seat of this foursome?
Will
I be late for that early meeting?
Is
my beeper dead? Is my Palm Pilot alive
where I have crashed?
Lights
flicker and rails squeal past Christopher St.
Stocks
Apple,
Adobe, Cisco, Immune Response, another guise
of
the highly defined, watching
High
Definition Television and the ticker simultaneously.
Japanese
entertainment industry bondsmen
cluster
around high screens on dark kiosks.
Columbian
emerald mines, Chinese cucumbers, biotech
chip implants,
Cell
Genesys, Waste Management, HBO-MTV, Capital Cities oil glut,
fiber-optic
telecom, Holographic-teleportation, T-cell receptor geometry.
Superconductive
materials transcend the earth wave.
I’d
call Ed Clark, buy Montana jade mines and sapphire bars.
I’ve
already got my plans for the profits from the
first
million carats:
1000
to Naropa –– 1000 to Karma Triyana Dharmachakra ––
1000
to Crestone retreat –– coffee shop in Las Vegas ––
Maybe
one within pacific wave reach, carrier
pigeon legion
all
carrying Om Mani Padme Hum scrolls.
Golden
sangha,
like
a triple-gem Hollywood band of influence
like
the bondsmen,
adhering
in concentric rings emanating from the
one holy guru.
All
else is charnel ground, a feast for crows.
So
rejected salesmen wander through
halls
of chrome elevators and moving stairs,
such
pure goddesses of porcelain in the polished glass,
Romeo-Prometheus
species moving in dark fabrics
through
endless aisles and rows of wanting to get to know you,
to
know your business and to make it my mask.
Take
stock of the precious commodity of balance
here
among skyscrapers and iron doors ––
thousands
after thousands of doors opening & closing
like
game pieces accumulating into millions of tons of cities,
our
shares of the market in rock.
Skinheads
march in Oregon, Idaho,
separatists
stock weapons of erasure,
dead-brain
arrogance, criminal hatred
as
an investment in heartbreak ––
Sad,
self-made victims cower and tremble
as
vampirous mini-despots devour their world
like
a virus, pollute the righteous, pure nature
they
claim to defend; a total, non-discriminating nature,
exuding
the antibody, antidote of seasons, time passing
in
renewal as they march to the tune of anti-prayer,
hands
held high to burning midnight.
Will
the fool, this goddess’s child,
remember
his weapon and tear through
the
aorta of this iron body, slice the hangman’s noose,
rethrow
the only vase for his one white rose?
Will
the market remember to crash when
all
hands are stirring the poison soup, when
Earth’s
management takes the poison pill to
avoid
the takeover of all things truly valuable?