Troublesome Truck







I’m a troublesome truck, you’ve done nothing wrong Thomas, you’re still a very useful

engine, but I was born with furrowed brow, and the need to run you off the tracks, and

may be, you needed all along, to be derailed and forced off, by the likes of me, off your

safe, shiny, go nowhere rails. I’ll see you at the quarry, I mean no harm. I have to

somehow let you go now, you pull away, I’ll push. I’ll look into your beautiful green

eyes that once adored me, and stay with you, in your eyes, as you steam away.



























The Sadness Calendar





Some days are earmarked for sadness. It seems to me there is some schedule I am unaware of that dictates what will be a good day and what will be a terrible day. I think there must be some cosmic schedule. I don’t want to see it though, would you? It would include the day the love died, the day you found out you had breast cancer or the day you realized your parents were closing in on death. The calendar of the future, if you could glance at it, would have a date on it when you watched you aging father hobble to a chair and ask for his scotch refilled for hours on end. Unending hours. There would be a date and time on this calendar that you first realized your mother more closely resembles your grandmother, an aging decaying relic, holding on, because of a non existent alternative, and she is confused and tired. Most disturbingly however is watching her in servitude to a more immediate victim; her time ravaged betrothed. My father, the icon, literally fading away before my eyes. Shrinking, drinking and waiting. Playing out his hand. Playing the cards he was dealt? No, I think not. HE did not choose wisely. He gave up too soon. He waited to see what was around the corner instead of choosing which corner he wanted to turn. I love him, I love my father, I love my mother, but I can’t repeat them, I can’t be like them. They sit, and commiserate, and go over the days events. What events? They drink Cutty Sark of all things by the fucking gallon and talk about I can’t imaging what.
I can’t be like them, or like the old me for that matter. I am a reeling vessel in space with no connection whatsoever to what or where I’m supposed to be. I am Major Tom, lost in space. I’m the chimp stabbing at a short circuited control panel. I’m waiting out my air supply in my strapping white and orange space suit, running out of O2, running out of answers, running out of the will to live. Let me go gracefully though, not like the elderly, not like the common folk, not like a shadow with a bottle of air, a plastic mask on my face, a diaper on my torso, iron wheels with rubber tires and a colostomy bag like a spoiler in the back. Let me lead me not to the fiscally prudent brown tinted macaroni and cheese in the cafeteria of the assisted living half way house to inevitability. Save me Jesus? I wish. Save me me.
But how?
How?