From the upcoming Train of Thought 2: Almost Home

 

This book I live in has 365 pages.
So far, I’m on chapter 31.
I don’t remember the last 25, It feels
like I’m only been awake and alive since 26.
Now, I am on my mission to change
what’s written, to make the hero a villain
and the heroine
kill him.

Can you manage
the tragedies of life?

Boys are born and
grow old to watch their mother
and father die.
Then by that time
the little boy has grown
into a man and has his own fam,
so, where am I

in this chapter?

I’m a freak of nature.
What’s saved in a life overwhelmed with hatred?
The heat I feel all year long, until
my blood runs cold,
dripping off into the sidewalk–
dead blood don’t clot,
it just washes away with the rain,
and all that’s left is a strange stain
built and instrumented from someone’s pain
or your own, as you scream at the walls.
You’re not alone. I am.

You are…the man with the fam
and I’m stuck on this train–
a man made of sand.
Screaming at walls, wanting to write poems,
a letter to the world, but I am bleeding ink on
the sidewalk.

Dead men can’t write,
it’s almost time to stop.

 

Jason Wright is the editor and founder of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. His new book is Train of Thought.