*note before reading- midway through poem the word "arresting" shows up. i dont know why. and i cant delete it. ok.

Track Seven..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

On a train to anywhere but here  

Here is where the heart lives for most    

my heart is always calling from a phone booth

in the rain. 

A black umbrella opens in my chest.  

How fast it trickles by                

I'm trying to understand how     

and where

and what would break first if I jumped,

most likely my phone booth.       

Through the window

mountains of graffiti, rocks, and hunchback fences       

a three-wheeler                                                           

yellow and red and forgotten

among the rubble                        

There is a man behind me

a black southern gent                    

talking to someone he loves.

He's started humming something now,

gentle Georgia I'm sure          

I want him to choke.

There is a foreigner to my left,          

I don't think he can read this.

If I knew any of that lover language –polly vu franfuck  

I'd write… "are you reading this?"         

He smells like a fire pit of dehydrated embers.

Like one or all of my ex-flames.          

I want his euro-techno headphones to explode into him.

Diagonally; a stupid-beautiful young girl,                                                                                                                  arresting.)

in slender boots that I would use to ride horses.  

I want her to get pregnant, lost, fat.

Yellow then red then forgotten.

And then me.

Among the mountains of pebble and gang names  

with a shirt reading "can i hold you?"

Tears smuggling the luster from my cheeks –

turpentine to mahogany.                                      

I only weep in profoundly public places

where no one dares ask                                      

If they did

I'd swallow hard

like a grade school blow job                     

like your first funeral.

I'd swallow hard and tell them to piss off

or

something pleasant

so long as I could blow my snots

into their palm pilots.

You see

there is a tiny retired maestro

inside my skin

the grand orchestra plays on

with no regard for him.

He's squatting on track 6

plucking other empty notes

using playbills as toilet tissue.

My poor minor chord friend…

I've taken track 7 again.                      

When I get to where I'm going

I'm sure I'll pull out a quarter or two

from a phone booth in the Pacific Northwest,   

looking for an answer

finding only an abandoned G-clef.          

I am dressed in layers of trains.       

I showed up

with no pulse in my voice       

with loose change                          

stark naked.