It catches you off guard
the rail, the straightness, the movement
of metal instead of malleable flesh. The jerk,
as men lose their hats, a college boy his black framed vision, the
pristine housewives their peace of mind and scramble
for it all around the pallid ankles
of their fellow man.
A page turns, a 17 year old boy looks out
the window, wanting for a cigarette. Play acting
with a sleight of hand toward the glass,
he lights one in his mind
on the afternoon rays.
The light catches, slides
down pleats, crawls down under the axle to hide dead
as all darkness, all melancholy, all blackness of the
immortal soul comes to be known
as a tunnel of stretched brick.
DING! A bell rings, a red light turns on, crowning
a young boy the Patron Saint of STOPS REQUESTED. He
answers, rises, setting those around him in vermillion glow, while they
bend their faces to the floor, holding their knees in place with
no eyes to show. He gets off.
The change drops, nothing is returned,
and empty hands steady the seats with their
otherworldly strength. But then their legs buckle into gaping
loops, now they feel gravity and blurring weakness,
loops, now they feel gravity and blurring weakness,
and I watch behind a book as their cheeks redden in the glorious moment that they
consider death, yet never know it.
It's too fast, it’s too
normal, it’s too improbable--their faces wane
again.
Everyone takes their place, leaning forward,
gasping backward,
fumes of a concrete trance; they focus on the head in
fumes of a concrete trance; they focus on the head in
front of them, reading their neighbors' brains-- it must
be so, as no one speaks a word.
People become general
in silence, complacent planets of a grey world,
rotating over speckled blue
plastic seats. They are made of soil.
The sun setting over the bay,
over the green rust bridge, draws no
attention, because it is carved up
by silver right angles, our bullet box, and
black accordion walls, that play no music, but
instead inhale slowly,
stealing air, particle by particle
out of the coming night.
