Nothing's comfortable after midnight on the train.
Bones crunch into hard angles,
drunks stumble and shout down the isle.
Someone moans from below,
cry-like and hallow.
No one knows if it's a he or a she,
or why he's wailing "No!"
Babies harmonize with his hurt,
the train jolts stopped mid-farm.
There's so much crying
that passengers at every edge
sit on their seat-ledges
wondering, deer-faced and dumb,
when the wildness will be done.
The bells bling.
The lights sing.
My blood cries shrill like spires.
It is not a pretty song.
The cops crew up and toss the wailer ocean-side,
field of weeds and cuffed up needs,
dirt-to-mouth where he belongs.
"Thatta way!" they say.
"He was a bag of bad decisions!"
We set our sails with the sucker off ship.
Ladies laugh.
Door knobs jig.
Everyone pretends they know nothing
of a sadness so loud it gets dragged out by fire.
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