Manhattan to New Canaan

Motion again, Manhattan to New Canaan!
By the fasting Buddha's so swiftly,
This train moves northbound.
Goodbye to Rome on the Hudson
We float on electronic rivers,
Like uprooted trees
Spinning toward a divine lightening.
Time ushers us on,
A commodity of tragedy.
Man is so close
As to only dream the spaces between.

Underground I write
In the cobwebs of Grand Central Station.
Pointed northwards toward the cooling forests,
September and harvest,
Do these rails tend so painfully stretched,
So buried in this city of cities of cities.
Manhattan is all the cities of earth,
Set aside each other
Floating on the motherfucker of invention.

We crawl slowly above the sputtering rails.
"Faster," I say.
I wish to see the stars open the pathways,
Tunneling to worlds of gods and guardians,
Not these dreary sculptured bricks of low-income housing
The 99th street stables for the black war workers,
Who built the machines that pounded Dresden,
Only to be discarded and caged once more
In the demonic kennels of this Empire.

Economics! Lineages! Chains reaching out,
Reflexes unconsciously compelling,
All directions,
Galaxies of DNA,
Karmas blossoming exactingly.
We are so intricate, like Lazarus,
Who Christ restructured in the desert of a crowd
"Miller Time" for the Buddhas,
Who dance their ecstatic feet upon bloody Tibet,
China's doom --
All present as I cross the Harlem river,
The Bronx,
"Ain't that tough enough?"
Krishna in a 72 Chevy,
No rust for his calender,
His times are both near and far,
According to whim.

The old silver-haired man to my right falls asleep
Resting on my shoulder.
The power leaves but on I write,
As I prop up this great white fuck of a man,
Fuck of my ancestors, of Stamford, Connecticut
Where a Buddha grew to love green fields and girls.
My aura flows into this sleeping testament of life,
A trick of the spirit.
I concede to him my arm and my power,
For into other worlds do I lean wearily,
Expecting nothing less.

I ruffle the pages of this poem,
The old sleeper awakens,
For a moment,
Embarrassed,
Erect against the boxcar air,
Yet again, like a soggy reed,
He lands unknowingly on my shoulder.

Where are we on this evening train?
Have the angels shut the stars closed?
All I see is a nothingness against the glass.
Man's reflections pale against his works,
His great white history and conquest,
Results now asleep against my shoulder
On a train
Awaiting New Canaan.