From the Coast of Stupefy City
No one can jog ever so slightly ahead
of the trains
that don’t run on time,
so much as they just head out
for cigarettes,
and wind up disappearing into the panoramic void
of having to carry out a million
useless errands along the way.
It would be nice to do that,
whenever someone is honestly
expecting you to show up at their sports casual wedding
in the bowels of Central Park.
You could tell them you’re on your way,
and then just pop out,
at some point before you get to Penn Station,
stopping just shy of the disasters
that usually follow any effort
to be more than a passenger on a train
that doesn’t even have a personality.
These trains don’t even have the will
to be greater than what you have come to expect.
You could run just ahead of all of that,
and since you’re already
doing more than physics and commonsense
would ever dream to allow,
you may as well go a little further.
Might as well just leave the trains
and raging subway station posters
about immigrants,
or the next big thing that’s going to take
Madison Square Garden by storm.
When you’re being unreasonable,
and these days,
everything is,
you may as well ask for more
than you’re probably worth.
So, you may as well go further.
You may as well learn to jump
the way Superman did,
before someone realized
that was ridiculous and kind of boring.
You’re not Superman.
You just want to be somewhere
that is different to the point
of being impossible to completely understand
the first or eighth time around.
Jump over everything. Hell,
jump through things,
if you have to.
Why should bricks and airplanes
and war heroes stop you now?
Eventually,
you’ll get tired of the volcanoes
and trees that seem to pop out
of the sky,
rather than the other way around.
You’ll be dead-and-breakfast tired.
So you’ll just eventually stop,
and that’s where you’re going to be.
The best part will be the fact
that you won’t have to owe the church
a goddamn thing.
Not like they’d even believe you.
Or remember your name.
Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. He is a monthly columnist with both Drunk Monkeysand Cultured Vultures, in addition to being the co-host of the podcast Cinema Hounds. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, as well as A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He lives in Bay Shore NY with his wife and a quartet of fiendish ferrets.