The Fat Man Took The Last Train Out Of Terrapin

by Kevin Hogan

The phone ringing early, and strange

words of a being ceasing (you said

soul to flesh). I never thought about it

until then and it scared me; your spirit

may not still be roaming the rotting countryside ----

Only you know --- Paranoid and trying to sing

slow, sweet, and beautiful. I heard

The news at ten, wanting the words

to lie and opening a million books

I never wanted to read. Was it a dream

coveted and dusted into the corner

like so many toys of youth, a lesson

we didn't see had to be learned?

It was the strangest love I had ever known,

that never spoke at or against me; your voice

still creaks in the rooms overhead, sleeping

on rose petals and finding some deliverance.

A bated brilliance we revealed in

on a sugar cube Sunday entering the coliseum.

Electric, I can remember it all from the beginning:

being saved by a bolt of crazy blue inspiration

charging through the barricade as spirits danced

and you said "you got no dime, but you got some time.”

Who saw it rushing by? Seeking shelter each day

in sunsets, across a dark musical landscape and tangled

with the roots of destiny. Weaving a tapestry

along to the final note of summer before realizing

within that innocence the great prophets were

but dreaming mortals, elders of a patchwork tribe

sometimes, always asking only to be people who share

A common bond; love or life, lying lithe

at the edge in panic before coming back with hope.

A new mythology as the world grows smaller

everyday; only now are we that old, with a wisdom

often forgotten, but never misgiven. There is a dream

whose content is yet to be revealed if we dare

be silent and let it be told, no reward

for only trying beyond a wall of pure sound;

in this day long after sing to me, bring focus

to the chaos in a hunger religion, satisfy the doubt

with brutal honesty --'Nothing gonna bring him back'.

Fearing the impending tick of time

that flies through the only flag I'd ever flown;

raised above one of those long dark Terrapins,

where being ceased but life continued

in a rush of sound and sunlight, still straining

to hear the whistle of your train

coming out of the distant

silence, screaming

into the station

to take me

home.