14,060. PLEASE DON'T EVER

PLEASE DON'T EVER

Walls spattered with train-station

paste and posters, from long ago.

All the usual crud of a nightmare:

Broadway plays: The Gin Game;

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are

Dead; Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's

Hung You In the Closet and 

I'm Feelin' So Bad.

-

The train would roll by all this,

on brutal Winter mornings : the

Jersey Meadows pig-farms, back

in 1967 when they were still there.

The truck dumps and garbage heaps;

broken tiles from bathrooms, and

pieces of Penn Station too, just 

then being torn down.

-

I'd just sit there, grimly watching.

Like a toadstool in a bad swamp:

Some Meadowlands paint factory,

every time, with their drainage

pipes running right into the

river. My friend said : 'Those

bastards should have to drink

that stuff.'

-

I never saw a plane have to

land in the swampy river; you'd

think doubt, and angst, and anger

would have brought one down.