no home in my fatherless fatherland
only a coach class ticket up and down
grey winter rail lines
thanks be to god for
rusted electrical poles laced with dead vines
and dead trees clinging to black riversides
and substations hiding in algae choked swamps
and black industry in rain soaked wastelands
and eleven visits to the dining car
and astroturfed parks kept from refineries
and tanks of liquid methane by ball courts
and coal-fired plants near Spanish Mission churches
and old men who talk about science fiction
and windswept marshlands in North New Jersey
and damp heaps of clothes along the highways
and a slow procession of green boxcars
and the unaccompanied senile ladies
i could never write like chaucer or villon
because the world we live in is unordered
the sun moves slow and cold across the sky
there is no king in israel and not
a single person follows traffic laws
on the train i am safe from all harm and
on the train there are no surprises and
on the train we are safe from witchcraft and
on the train there is a little more sense
each passenger is paid for and marked down
the only direction is toward heaven
for when the lord comes into his kingdom
it will look like New England, but for now
i am stuck in the american veld: cracked
between rolling hills of pennsylvania
tract housing, counties pitted by accutane
strip mines empty for lifetimes
god’s imperial countryland, sixth kingdom
of rome, marriage of babylon and persia
king koresh-david, king messiah, why
have you left me alone in the wilderness
without a train ticket
without a nation
without anything
— Jan Stanek is very tired and tweets from @stanizslaus on Twitter.