Steam Punked

My child-self and my adult-self

Got into an argument the other day,

About what’s real, and what really isn’t,

And getting lost in the mazes of memory-

Did that really happen? Or was it a dream?

A nightmare? Experience serene?

I mean, what do you expect

From a meat mech suit

Piloted by three pounds of sentient jelly?

This was way before images

Flashed at you, day in, day out,

And I barely knew there was a telly.

Who won the argument, you ask, with tact?

It’s still going on, and things like facts

Will not get in the way of my stubborn position

That it really happened, and the opposition

That’s it’s patently impossible

And no matter how implausible

My mind will sit up and demand

That it ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

The situation?

I swear, when I was two,

I saw a sleek steam train come through

On the old rail line through town.

I remember everything,

The clouds, the crowd, goods it would bring,

How grand the day, like fond renown.

I have now reached fifty-five

And parents and grands (while still alive)

All told me ‘twas a fever dream-

But I remember! Brisk-y breeze,

Happily waving through some trees

That don’t exist outside that scene

Inside my mind.

Was it a dream?

Eh, probably.

Two sets of parental units

Can’t all be gaslighting gits

Just to erode my happy recollection.

Besides, the damning evidence

That makes my vision have no sense

Is the date of the line’s discontinuation-

In nineteen sixty-eight.

(Two years before my natal exposure,

Four years before my vision’s composure,

Seven years before my verbal disclosure.)

But dangit I remember! To this very day!

The sight of train pulling into station

Should not lead to doubtful imagination

And the downhill slope that it implies.

The colors, sights, sounds, and scene

Were much more vivid than a dream,

And I can tell the truth from lies.

I know what separates day and night,

Experience, daydream, fancy flight,

Nightmare, wish, and brain process.

I can sort what’s real, what’s not,

What’s fantasy, what’s buried thought,

What’s deceit, and what’s sheer stress.

I’ve even had a time or two

A dream who’s outcome is quite true

And portends future happenings,

I know how to sift and sort

The natterings from real import,

And how it feels, to know those things.

When I apply the same rubric

To this particular mental trick

Of synapses and fitful state

I can judge, and I equate

Between the two, truth’s what I pick.

But, despite evidence to the contrary

I choose in ways, quite the ornery,

To believe in a sunny day,

With a train that never existed

And memories that ultimately consisted

Of crossed neurons and imagination, okay?

And maybe it’s just better that way.