Reposted by Dean Norton
Not feeling very profound today #PoemsAbout #DeadLetters @thebrokenspine.co.uk Not the house style, but there you go.
Dean Norton
@zentinl.bsky.social
200 followers 111 following 1.1K posts
somewhere between cold coffee and used twist ties is a paper life in an automatic heart
![DISJUNCTION
they took the train away
and they tore the lonely station down
left the barefoot pineys
with no way to get outta this town
So I’m talking about the old train station by where I walk the dog, that there’s only a sign now and a vinyl fence in front of an overgrown embankment, and that there used to be a turntable a few yards back because three rail lines met there, and my wife says I’m sorry but I just don’t give a shit.
the boiler is hissing the steam is nice and hot
the blue comet’s departing at nine on the dot
gals in summer dresses guys in linen suits
headed for the boardwalk on the classiest of routes
So we’re on our way to WaWa and my son goes what was all that about with Mom and I’m like I’m looking up shit for the prompt, last train. And then I tell him how my grandfather operated the Public Service trolley from the Hub City to Perth Amboy when he was still a teen. I wish he was still alive so I could ask him about it now. I wish he had told me stories when I was a kid. All I have is an odd quote in a retirement program I found at my mom’s that says, “My greatest thrill (Keasby [sic] Trestle) You ask me how I felt when the trolley went off the track.” I don’t even know who the “You” was, much less the how why and when.
the seriouser I study to me it starts to seem
the world is just a fat man in a trolley problem meme
I’m out of joy I can’t employ anything uplifting
the more I learn the more I turn to multitrack drifting
So I tell my son I looked up the Keasbey Trestle and didn’t see anything about trolleys, but the deadliest US train wreck in the last hundred years did happen in Keasbey when “The Broker” commuter train derailed on a temporary wooden trestle built to accommodate New Jersey Turnpike laborers working on the main line. If my Pop Pop conflated the train and the trolley I wonder why his most thrilling memory would be something he wasn’t involved in and my son says probably because every other workday was boring. Yeah I laughed it p…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xdsafbyenhkdiwry6znl7bki/bafkreig3schdb5ysatvjlv57dxfasatiejvfsfwivc3zcvhay23hx3im3u)
