Night falls…
Voooooosh… Da-Ping!
It’s thick mists of transparent black velvet
Envelop the earth’s surface.
It tenderly merges with all objects
Physical and spiritual,
And here,
Here I stand,
Cheeseburgers, French fries and orange juice in hand.
My mind wanders from the harsh outlines of the train station.
The termite ridden wood of the overhead beams,
Expels shavings as the wind rushes past exposed sections,
And the shavings…
Fall…
Fall upon me as snow flakes would.
Alas, they are unable to melt,
And stick to the wool of my jumper.
Very irritating this…
Very irritating!
Thus, as I was saying,
My mind wanders from the harsh outlines of the train station.
And dreams of the juicy tastes that will soon enter my mouth.
The spicy tomato source,
Easing itself over the B.B.Q. mince
And the melted cheese trying to escape from between the two buns.
The pickles tearing and squirting their sourness into…
But wait…
A light,
A light is approaching along the tracks.
And yes,
Yes, a train is attached to it!
An irregular racket precedes the standard non-chop caboose,
Clank, der clank, der clank, eee-k… eeeeee-k… splat!
And then,
The doors open – well, nearly.
“Get your muscle behind that door handle lady, while I kick in this edging!”
Incredibly, the carriage has started moving,
But aren’t we supposed to be inside?
The lady hangs onto the handle.
Me? I find myself suction cupped to the door!
“Hey”, I shout to the guard.
“Nice evening”, he shouts back.
“Stop the train!”
“Oh… OK…”, der clank, eee-k… splat!
Doors are released – we crawl inside.
Cheese burgers, French fries and orange juice in hand.
Cheese burgers, French fries…
Cheese burgers?
Cheese burgers!
Everything’s still on the platform!
Doors slam shut.
Ahhh… Ahhh…
Tears begin to flood my eyes.
Oh the pain,
The pain of striving to be a Samaritan.
The pain of trying to convince your stomach not to commit euthanasia!
I take a seat.
Or, more correctly, the seat takes me as we jolt forward.
I gaze into the blank expressions on the faces,
Hoping to gain a sympathetic glance for my troubles.
Instead,
A paper plane hits me in the back of the head.
“Who did that?” I bark in every direction.
A little Asian face pops up from behind a seat.
“Allo…” it says
“Me did it…”
What can you say?
I choose the authoritarian stance.
“I want your name, rank and serial number!”
“Huh…” he says.
“Nothing…” I reply, exhausted.
“Ni-ice evening is it?”
I glare at this unsupervised 5 year old,
My eyes are focused like a hawk’s,
My hands are itching to ring his neck.
And in spite of my obvious disdain,
He reaches into his pocket,
Carefully extracting two cotton covered,
Seven month old yellow jelly beans,
And says, “Foo you!”
Oh… how I wish I had my own car,
Something to escape these cartoon characters!
Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 1987
(4th Poem written in 1987)