5087. WHAT MAKES ME REGISTER, HEAT

WHAT MAKES ME REGISTER, HEAT

Too early for long, the slim train decidedly runs slowly in

the cold of the dark night air : two conductor women, black

girls, large heads of dreadlocks under that conductor cap and

all in blue, walk together through a nearly-empty car. In silence

I swear they're twins  -  sisters as one, proud and tough. To click

a ticket can't be a life's work, but this is a moment worth dredging.

-

I want for more : sitting back in an otherwise empty car, like

a ride on my own coach-car, I imagine Andrew Carnegie, 
channeled here, and I spit in his spittoon. In silence of course, 
no splash; the girls would notice, or little note. Not sure. 
How to connect? And what does a 'conductor' do, after all, 
but ride harsh on 'conduct' becoming? 
I relax a bit, and just ride on.

-

Let me take this comic coal-book backwards 'round the bend

beyond the glen. There's really nothing happening, and this is

fairy-land : in an archeology of the mind there are bodies

that matter, and others, I suppose, that don't. The dead-shell

cavalry yarn is mine. 'Wash me in the water that you wash

your dirty daughter; and I shall be whiter than the

whitewash on the wall.' I remember what I said, a

soldier's song now, from the Great War of 1914.