How I Spent My Fall Vacation

Sun went down looking like the eye of

GodBehind icy mist and stark bare trees

Inside the dim empty cinema two guys in leather jackets

Glance at each other and shiver'

They never built these places with winter in mind'

Out the window down the gray road

You can see old walled monastery

Now become a barracks for the paramilitary police

I saw an old lady's face once on a

Japanese train

Half lit, rich with soft luminosity

She was dozing straight upright head bobbing almost imperceptibly

Wheels were playing fast in 9/8 time

Her husband's friendly face suddenly folded up in a sneeze

Across the straight a volcano flew a white smoke flag of surrender

In a Roman street on a full moon night

I was sick and there was a young cop in a circle of yellow light

As we drew near he snapped the safety off his machine pistol

And slid a trembling finger to the trigger

I wanted to say something calming but couldn't catch his eye

He didn't want contact -- he was trained to see movement'

Well don't shoot me, man,

I'm a graceful slow dancer

I'm just a dream to you not real at all'

I wonder if

I'll end up like

Bernie in his dream

A displaced person in some foreign border town

Waiting for a train part hope part myth

While the station changes hands

Or just sitting at home growing tenser with the times

Or like that guy in '

The Seventh

Seal'Watching the newly dead dance across the hills

Or wearing this leather jacket shivering with a friend

While the eye of

God blazes at us like the sun...