Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

hey, you’re not dead, you’re
doing good, damned good again,
what’s this talk about tossing it
in?

what you were doing while you
were feeling sick enough
to die,
what you were really doing was just re-
charging your batteries.

now let everybody get
out of the way,
you’re thundering
down the track again
like a locomotive
hauling 90 thousand
unwritten poems
and they’re all
yours
and you’re pounding along
the rails
sometimes through dark tunnels
but then roaring out again
into the
light!

who the hell said that
you no longer had it in
you?

it was you who said that.

the engineer

who is now
feeling a fresh surge of
hope and
power
and who is
grinning madly at the
thought of this
wonderful
new
day.