24 october

Even though I had a better way of thinking about it when I was raking the leaves I will say it now anyway even though it’s too late in the day this part will be edited out just like my friend who was on the train was saying he was too tired because he was on the train and his head would explode it reminded me of the days when I was saying my head would break and I was on trains shaking and cold and hot and sticky with exhaustion waiting for the time to slide down to the floor and through to the ground where at least it must be cooler than in this space and I remembered when he said this that nothing we were saying about thinking about how we could say nothing else nothing nothing would be left of anything else but this train and the space the shaking and the sound nothing but the rattling so too all that is left of my day is the leaves I had a clever line to deliver about a lecturer who famously gave it all away in the title but perpetually forgot and arrived at empty lecture halls and this was the punch line but it would be a poem and the rustling of the leaves as I hazarded them into a gray plastic wheelbarrow was a train rambling through the mind of how this could all be awkward but succinct the pity of the man on the stage trying to sleep through the night when his head aches and the audience is missing the lapsed attention of the attendant and the air that was never conditioned the programs that were never printed the tickets folded in a methodical manner and the leaves tucked under the bed in the compartment if you please sir this is my stop and I had a clever line if you don’t mind getting up I’ll just reach under there and pull it out and I’m sorry to bother you really I am and he draws himself up and leans on the top bunk turning to gaze through the window toward a time when this will be a memory and he too will be raking leaves and wondering about poems that will be forgotten when the piles are all composting