Shopping Carts & Trash

The leaves are on the wind tonight

The city grinds and hums

I cat tongued to pass through the glow

Of sodium lights on a concrete wall

Through the factories and railroad tracks

Through shopping carts and trash

Where bottles broke in fits of mirth

Where weeds spring forth from trampled earth

My mouth is sewn my hands are bound

My dreams are cased in stone

My memory in charcoal draws a flower

The wind is blowing through the trees

Casting leaves upon the night

A train is passing through the yard

Pulsing light between its cars

And from each box car's passing door

A ghastly vision peers

It sends a tremor through my skin

For in each car I see again

Specter watching from beyond

That's bound to ride like me

Reappearing in each passing car

It's eyes sunk in like dying stars

And wherefore has this vision come

That none should see but me

It's face like what my mirror shows

Displays my fate from choices chose

Fate not sealed not carved in stone

Still a different path it excludes

Choices yet to make with trains

To ride or lay down on the main

I feel a chill like shards of rime

And light a cigarette

I shudder because freedom found

And maybe it's time to leave this town

So puttin' out my cigarette

I take my pack up from the ground

In the wind that blows before a rain

The fated one runs toward a train