The 586, an Inkblot Train by Devon Dozlaw For most of us In utero refers to a specific stage early in our development, A stage of waiting But for Kurt this term refers to a late stage in development See Kurt was comfortable on the stage, but only with the lights out Here we are now, entertain us, but turn the damn lights out I don't want to be in the limelight Most of us spend our lives waiting for the train, writing shitty blues songs about waiting for trains The difference is, we aren't all waiting for the same train For some the train is an elusive yet comfortable bed, “I can't go out tonight, I need to get to bed” Well I can understand wanting to dream but you don't need a bed for that, nor do you need sleep My train is the one with the 586 word poem that stretches out across the cars in ornate yet vicious graffiti My train is the one that people are happy to have to stop for in the city because it takes them out of their mundane grind and it's a beautiful moving canvas As the train cars go by it's like flipping through the amateur motion picture exercise that I sketched into a friend's agenda while in high school; in utero, to the lay person This poem, like all poems, is an ink blot piece For those of you tuning in at home, you can create your own ink blot by eating the most self-indulgent meal possible, then wiping your mouth with a napkin, then unfolding the napkin and interpreting it My inkblot smear perpetually changed like the doodles or the message conveyed by the train art Any time I thought I could see something in the stain it changed I decided to neglect the acts of metacognition and self-analysis and decided to follow other precarious masters The people waiting for these trains were more fun anyway One day while dancing to punk rock a stranger whom I knew well asked me “Do you like the Beatles or the stones?” I searched his face for an all of the above option And that was when I realized that there are those who are waiting for the trains, and those who spray paint the trains then venture onward looking for new canvases I was thrown around inside the train station mosh pit, paralyzed by ambivalence Then I heard the ambulance and the EMT put a black bag over my head and all I could hear was the cacophony supplied by the dissonant clash of ambulance sirens and the bells that go off to prepare us for the train Rape me! Then my friend from the pit was holding the defibrillator to my chest, frying my heart and lungs while screaming the question “Do you like the Beatles or do you like getting stoned?” I said those were the same thing. The ambulance drove along the track trying to beat the train but the train trudged onward indefatigably. Eventually the train started to lacerate the back of the ambulance and before it bit me I found a whole in the black bag, just big enough to see through Up the road a ways was Kurt, half-full spraypaint bottle in hand, freely suntanning on the track with a letter in his mouth I smiled when we got close enough for me to read the note. It was a 586 word poem that ended with the words “It's better to burn out than to fade away” .