A Long Peregrination

It has been a long peregrination along these tortuous train tracks,

Where I have taught myself not to be spontaneous, although I do not think spontaneity was ever truly inherent in me.

If it were, I would not be on this tortuous path in the first place,

Where a myriad of monstrous creatures have wandered onto my humble train of thought,

And because I have discovered that it is innate for me to crave solitude,

I often try to catch the next stop when I see my unsightly travel companions approaching.

My attempts, however, have thus far been thoroughly abortive,

For I always spot one lurking somewhere in a darker car.

I’m no travel buff, and yet I can’t stop moving, sitting alight the silly little caboose of hindsight.

My train’s shiny, urbane veneer was rendered irrelevant, ripped off in a collision years ago,

And its engine’s latent, itinerant tendencies are exposed to the elements.

I don’t give it enough credit, though:

Sometimes that wounded train of thought does have a spontaneous moment.

Sometimes it happily romps in dandelion-filled fields of thought,

Before it tires and returns to its tortuous road,

Unable to stop, gently chugging along the tracks.

In my endless musings on this train, I have deemed the conjugal relationship between the conscious and subconscious to have ended in a bitter divorce,

For they now wander alone in different directions,

And I possess no ability to modify their courses,

To bring them back together without their separate paths causing a collision.

I monitor their individual progresses, for on my train, sitting right next to me, is a barometer

That measures the disparity between those two lost lovers.

But it is purely scientific, it makes no attempt to accommodate their paths to suit me.

They are in separate stations now,

Riding their own, separate, tortuous, and occasionally torturous, roads.

And I’m just along for the ride.