Soiled Fruits Lay On The Ground

The train and the track like a heart beat
Unless it was mine
I wanted there to be smoke and long guns but I just had my legs

Outside the people
The door and a new world made of watches and suitcases
Heads lifted up and bodies tied together waiting
Ripped apart
Trolleys full of food, drinks and napkins hooting their way among the crowd
Benches, pigeons, skeletons

I’d left the city the money the booze
I’d run away from elbow fights
The sun like nowhere else and the moon
Bright, with a smiling face
Water to wash all our pains
Grass itching away
I had nothing left to say
Murders, dancers and Indians
A piano playing somewhere
Spirits in the woods
Soil, gold, rivers and endless horses

Willing to save a few seconds, the trolley hooted again
Instead of avoiding Jesse, the crowd now decided to push her
The thing is, once she started to follow the movement, she didn’t stop
Under their armpits, they only sweat venom
In the mouths, teeth are so acid
The eyes themselves don’t see
While the hearts they never beat

The station was grey
The direction white
The future black
Jesse red on the ground

Stones
The cheek cut open
Precisely fourty four seconds to die

© Mark Cohen