6 O'Clock Train Chronicles

I am on this bus
Riding to nowhere in particular
It's just like my life
Heading nowhere
On a steady course
The train does not hunk
The couple in front of me repulse me
They remind of John before the booze
Before he decides
To give himself over
Arms outstretched to the cuff of drunk

See John was a man
Before the day after,
He would pat my back
And comb out my knots,
He would work in the day
And meet me at the train station
Everyday at 6
Like clock work.
A day before the day after
John told me
When he came home that night
Reeking of whiskey
And the smell of the beginning
Of the end,
That he missed the train.
The day after,
I stood by the bathroom
While john threw up
All the leaving
His father has left him
He threw up
All of the moving
From foster home
To foster home
I made ginger-ale
And fed it to him in bed.

Two nights later
I took the 6 o'clock train
Without John
To go pick John up from the station
They said he "exposed himself" in public
I am not sure what John exactly did
But i could see his mother
In his apologetic eyes
John told me that they were overreacting,

"It's a race thing" he said.

When John started coming home
With pupils leaving their enclosing
Taking a train
Up Johns brain and having him say things like
"My stepfather put his hand down my pants"
I listened
I waited for the high to pass
I listened as the drugs poured out
Pieces of him he spent time keeping in
I found traces of white powder
In the back pockets
Of Johns jeans.

Before the day after
John was a man
Trapped in himself
He walks by his mother everyday
She can't tell its him
He brings her breakfast at the corner of the street
And dinner after the 6 o'clock train.

Before the day after
Johns mother had died
Maybe the madness took her
Or her soul was tired of being lost
John found her hugging her knees.

John is still a man
But he used to be my man
Now John comes home every night
He looks like leaving
He smells like cheap female perfume
And local beer.
I hold the door
To let the ghost of a man
Walk into my house
As much as i want to close the door after he walks out
And change the locks
I still stay.

I am on the 6 o'clock train
I know where i must go
But the train keeps moving
The call said a body was found
His id had Johns name on it
I am to identify the body
John has done what his father is good for,
Leaving.

Before the day after
John would hold my hand in the morning
And tell me
In his voice which has being scarred
By years of internal screaming
Yearning for love he never found
Maybe in the end he found it
At the buttom of the bottle
He would say

"My father may have left, but i am still here"

Now that i think about it
Maybe it was more for Johns healing
Reminding himself
The two of him-selves
That he must not give in
To the darkness that tails him
And hangs above his head
Like an angelic halo
Not for me
The train is past my stop for the 10th time
I am not sure

I should keep going.