Mysterious barricades, a headrest (of sorts),
boarded the train at Shinjuku junction
to the palpable consternation of
certain other rubberneckers already installed
in the observation car of their dreams. “It’s so peaceful
on my pallet. I could just live here.”
In a second the deadbeat returned with lunch tokens.
It had been meant to be sublime, but hell was
what it more specifically resembled. Remember
to hold the course and take two of everything. That way
if we make journey’s end before the tracks expire
we’ll have been found living in it—the deep magenta
sunset I mean.

There is nothing like putting off a journey
until the next convenient interruption swamps
onlookers and ticket holders alike. We all more or less
resembled one another, until that fatal day in 1861
when the walkways fell off the mountains and the spruces
spruced down. I mean it was unimaginable in a way.
You’ll have to install a park with chairs and restrooms
for the weary and a simple but firm visitors’ code
for it to be given out in your name and become a boon 
to limp multitudes who thought you were somebody else
or didn’t know what it was you did. But we’ll stay clean,
by God, and when the tide of misinformation reaches
the first terrace, we’ll know what to do: yell our heads off
and admit to no mistakes.

The land stretched away like jelly into a confused cleft.
All was yapping, the race having ended
before we arrived, with mixed results.
Nobody knew what they owed or how much credit
had been advanced, being incapable of niceties like buzzing
and herding fleas till the next shipment of analgesics arrived.
It was like forming signals out of loam when you were young
and too discouraged to care very much
about aftershocks or where the die ended up.
It was too smoky in the little kitchen garden or potager
to pay much mind to the rabbits and their plankton
dispensary. Something had been launched. We knew that.