Caught between something and nothing

We're all angry. We're all fed up. Jaded, fuming or self-righteous. We're tired of thinking about it, tired of analyzing it. Hell we're even tired of talking about it...and when a person is tired of hearing himself talk, well, that's someone who's just sick of it all.

Each of us, according to whatever criteria you choose, has reached a point where we've chosen our island and we'll use our teeth to defend it if necessary. The old world collapsed a hundred years ago and the false front we put up in its place disintegrates as we breathe. The poisons of our greed and speculation are starting to show up in the most dire of readings, even the luddites know something isn't right.

Popular music has reverted to absolute twaddle, nonsense, silliness...because no one even wants to sing about it anymore. We're losing whatever tenuous grip we had on reality because nothing makes sense any longer, each new theory is scattered to dust by the slightest zephyr of logic. Deep minds continue to ponder, politicians to lie, soldiers to kill, robber barons to fleece us all 24 hours a day, but the shape of a new future stubbornly refuses to crystallize. We've pulled away the curtain at last and...POOF! There's nothing behind it. Not even the Great Oz in bumbling, lever-pulling bearded old man form. Just nothing.

The center of our days is whatever the newest gadget in our lives might be. It's all we talk about, all we rejoice in, or at least it's all we talk about rejoicing in. Our lives, our culture has ceased to progress, only the gadgets progress. It's their future, we've handed it to them.

We live in a grey area between the death of the last vestiges of our culture and the coming of another which, in fact, may never come. It's almost like we've run out of ideas...or iterations of the same goddamned ideas we've been squeezing the life out of, like spent tea leaves, for centuries upon centuries.

So here goes...

How long is the wait between trains?

on this platform where oily steams turbulate, wizard-y mists cloak wheels and wire

in this half light that could be dawn

or dusk, there is little point in asking

no one knows or if they do

they will not tell

It can’t be long –moments only- since we stepped off the train that brought us

onto platforms where my train-mates already sleep

curled on benches, slumped on suitcases

even my memory seems asleep when I recall that train,

that brought us here: pictures only, fragments as though

experienced second-hand.

The train tarries; the rails are cold, even the coming of night (or day) seems delayed

time between trains grows wider or time

is frozen, or differs for each traveler

maybe the train will never come or if it does there will be

no room for us who’ve aged too quickly, grown too old

for destinations

(for there are those born between one time and another, for whom there is no future)

I believe a train was meant to come for us as it has

for so many other travelers, since ever before any station was built

so many travelers caught changing trains, to wait in ignorance

of timetables, charts or schedules dismissed as nonsense

there was always a train before, for us,

But maybe not this time