Number 26 to Memphis

                                                               SOLD

The Number 26 train to Memphis
hovers above ladder-tracks
laid down by the indigenous
inside of visions in which they saw themselves
climb each rail across the world.
If you board the Number 26, now,
the conductor will drive you through a state
of abandoned, yet occupied railroad cars
fossilized in mass open graves.

Regarding your luggage:

Tourist -
life already stores inside you
the sands of Memphis,
the gyrations of Elvis
the Libations of Africans,
the base desires in your blues,
the post-Lenten carnivals inherent in your jazz.

Regarding fare dodging, the
Members of The Subterranean Indigenous Tourist Board
wish to tell you this:

scavengers and passengers
must and will pay,
scavengers and passengers
must and will pay.

And, if while sleeping in your sleeping car
a gaggle of horns wakes you,
screaming out in a cacophony of sorrow,
open your door to a procession
led by face masked marauders,
their plastic expressions altered
by fire-light from candles.
Join that army of perversely masked
women and men,
raising back into life
the sarcophagus of the world they carry.

Tracks and Tunnels can then
become the open road for
trains traveling over, under and through
the imaginations of
all cities called and not called Memphis.

The original "Number 26 to Memphis" painting is on sale here.