2013-04-15

Love, Trains, Stomach Ulcers

You picking me up on a drizzly gray morning.
Wasn't that just yesterday?
It seems so long ago.
It was my whole world.
You driving me to class.
Me always late for class.
Things change so fast.
The past has passed.
It cannot be recalled.
It's gone.

The future waits.
Ready to proclaim this moment as irretrievably over.
Existence is so transitory.
I tire
I sleep.

The morning light comes pouring in
The window with its shutters wide
The day begins -- it rained during the night.
I left the car windows open.

Holding you was so good yesterday.
My imagination seeks to make then now.
We rush so fast; very fast; incredibly fast; at the future.
Snatch an hour here, perhaps a whole day.
But it's always: Gotta...soon,
   Gotta...soon,
   Gotta...soon.
T.V. ad says "slowwwwwwww good" and is over in thirty seconds.
It's ridiculous.

Occupations, duties, chores, responsibilities,
Call and tug at you
And me.
The business man rushes off to work
The scientist labors to increase man's knowledge.
More bullshit to study,
More schools to keep folks studying it.
But the students know it's worthless.
They only want to be like the businessman.

My gramma taught me well: Don't dawdle.
The sign downtown says: No loitering.
And that T.V. again.
No wonder there are so many aspirin commercials.

We've taken the present's preciousness,
The illusionary, all-important series of instants in which we exist,
Given numbers to those instants,
And chained ourselves to the numbers
Schedules, Time cards, clocks,
     clocks,
          clocks.
Clocks! (What an absurd sounding word.)
Fastened onto prison walls
Strapped around our wrists like shackles.
clocks, clocks, clocks, to number now.
Do it by eight thirty.
Must hurry to finish by three fifteen.
Now exists only to prepare for eleven oh five.

High speed trains whistling through the day.
Side-by-side, I yell "I love you" over to the Kaye express.
You hear. You love me too. I'm the Steven express.
Our tracks separate, then reconverge, separate, reconverge.
All at breakneck speed.

I'm always leaving you too soon.
The world yells: Move!
     fast!
     nonstop!
Like flotsam I'm carried along in the flow.
Mind vaguely starts to formulate: NO!!
Can't we possibly take it slow?
When the moment is gone it's gone forever.

1977.06

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