The shelter belt express
The shelter belt express
A Lion in a well and it's roarings are thunderings. Savage and spitting in the pit of entrapment. People throw down bits of fat carved from dinner. He must enjoy the president's corpse sex with rubber is wisdom. Tormented by heaven, the first beast, far he had of feet. Therein shall they tread on the earth highway Into the path humidity? The beast dressed in red ribbons whirling as quietly as despair.
Get aboard the shelter belt express. A wooden train it runs on incense.
The beast saints, achieved failure as prophesied by the plugin colorful shroud. Frisk the rivers that cross October farm. Sometimes still airtight baggies of onion and ranch potato chips drift by on flood channels dug in the fields by natures plow. Beast saints roar prayers at midnight. It plugs back in discarded dreams. Barons with Bibles for a time, town. Another beast coming in the midst of love and song parade. A foreboding omen shrouds the town sky blackened by millions of passing crows.
Get aboard the shelter belt express. A wooden train it runs on incense. A big long wooden beak in front cuts the air with a note shifting whistle.
Signal gristle speck painted in the grove! A wooden train goes down tracks of bones. And out strung out on the nectar of the earth suntan dark red. Hold onto the hanging ropes over sand hills we go. I mask the prophets, I turn the stones. Baking muffins on a great red dragon. Reign patience on the sweet fields. Bugs make buds drip with honey. To get on this train you don't wave a ticket, you give up one finger bone. A spotlight on a puppet made of roadkill. It is entertaining passengers with a shuffling dance.
Get aboard the shelter belt express. A wooden train it runs on incense. A big long wooden beak in front cuts the air with a note shifting whistle. You can lean out the window and pluck a mask right off the passing branches. The tracks that this train puffs down appear before the train as it goes, and they are made out of bones. This express can turn on a dime. It puffs past unmapped shacks where witches stay up late cooking biscuits that add to the freight.
Digital grin makes windchime calm. Dancing Puppet makes the rain stop. To remain anonymous, as we chug through bleak small towns we hide behind strap on wooden beaks. We drink and laugh long enough to outlast the rain outside. Hundreds of wet tapping fingers. Falling towers of crisp light. Roll down the window catch some pungent ozone. Green mossed fences, the barbed wire turning into red dust. Oxidated windmills standing at drunken angles. A long track through many seasons, including extra seasons of some different distant dimension. Tree frogs cling to the wood-paneled sides of the train. Crows and wild turkeys roost on the roof traveling miles while sleeping.
Get aboard the shelter belt express. A wooden train that chugs on incense. A big long carved wooden beak in front slices the air with a low whistle sound. It goes right through meadows, You can reach out the window and pull an apple from the tree. A good thing to do, because sometimes its weeks before they serve food.
The odds of you ever seeing home again is low. This wooden creaking train runs a route through alternative worlds you know. The places get stranger until the oddness pulls back, new incense scents from the smokestacks. At at least you are nearer to your home. But the shades and layers are thin, are you sure this is where you have been? Step off the train and you might not ever ride it again. Get stuck in some different here. Perhaps waiting at the depot forever more.
This ghost train makes many stops along the way. And for random amounts of time, it stays. You might have to scramble to get back on before it chugs away. It bumps along to depots that are mostly abandoned. Some of them burned out husks. others with an ancient slow couple who make they're dying from selling food and iced lemonade to passers-by. Usually, you ride this train alone. Sometimes it is so packed full of folks. Sometimes you awake to an empty train, cold wind blows through a series of open windows, and tumbleweeds prowl the halls with dusty scratchy sounds. One by one, pull those windows down. This train was made before insulation was a common thing. So hot in the summer so cold in the winter, got to huddle by the steam engines, choking on the strong incense the fuels the train.
Walk inside the creaky wooden floors of the shelter belt express. A wooden train that runs on puffs of local dreams. It's fronted by a big long wooden beak The train may sprout fireworks at some random unknown holiday. You can lean out the window and upwards curve your face to catch cold soda in your mouth, a cola rain. This express can turn on a dime. It puffs past unmapped shacks where witches stay up late cooking biscuits that add to the freight. Get on this train without a name, expire your number and they will forget your name. All sorts of animals outside spinning in a circle, making attempted human sounds. All sorts of ancient things now sticking out above the ground.
This train chugs past scenes you remember from dreams, but you otherwise have never seen before. Past card houses as big as a barn, past scarecrows nailed to every now useless telephone pole. One car has these rusted out and faded crank powered games that cost a coin no longer in use to play. Another room has pictures ranging from the late 1800's to a few decades in the future. You can find new things in empty rooms you searched just yesterday, nothing is stable on this train.
Oh, the train goes and goes. For over a hundred years it has roamed. And now ahead the tracks are blocked by angry protestors in the path, waving fists and full of wrath. The train doesn't even slow down, through the crowd it generates a bloodbath. A newspaper article all faded in the ages.
Coin operated gun booths. You can be ruthless and shoot through the open window. Bringing down endless buffalo as you go. Just another pleasure you know, along the ghost train ride.
The train picks up speed on a gradual downward slope to a canyon in the high hill country. The wooden construction creaking bit to rip apart. A nightmare descent into a hole and threw a long, pitch black, and often flooded fifteen minutes. Water up to my ankles as I hang onto the coat hook, wondering how soon till this train breaks apart and I am left cold and wet lost in a pitch black labyrinth. But the train chugs up a slope and soon there is hope, and after that, there is open ground. All that water fell out when the train went at a steep angle.
Get aboard the shelter belt express. A wooden train that only goes by night or fog light. A haunted train, it's likely you are already dead. It goes right through corn fields, You can reach out the window and pull an ear from the stalk. You find strange relics like Madonna cassettes, but you have no walkman to play them on. 101 days I ride this train, through baked deserts and rain-soaked grassland plains. Through sagging ghost towns, past burial mounds. And the beast saints are waiting out a tornado by playing cards in a storm shelter by kerosene lamp. Bringing African grasslands meats to the trapped lion, special delivery. Above wafts of ozone purity recites that rain soon shall soak the land.
Open up the doors sealing cars and grotesque horrors and awes are that close. Opened a door, saw a room full of cats, a few of them were dead. The starving cats eating the dead ones and clawing other cats away.
I am so sexually hot on the shelter belt express. But only abuse and or money is sex so I can only rub my own. But every time I try the empty train has passengers who ruin this moment. No privacy in the afterlife unless you died with money to fund it. Around here I fear, money is not abundant.
Once I found a banjo in an empty couch room. I spent the next few weeks learning how to play it by ear. I was getting pretty good but when I woke up one morning the banjo was gone. A note of yellowed paper took its place. The writing on it so faded I could not make it out.