come mute

This train went halfway to fucking Oslo.
Cost a fortune to go concrete-hopping
from slurb to slurb, each station's sign
more nauseating than the one before.

They give the suburbs sloppy names
and a train that takes an hour
tracks like one-way intestines
out into the go-where-nowhere.

A prison with a ring around the Rosie
route to freedom:
To travel upstream to the city
is as hard as shitting backwards.

(Written October 29, 2001)