Surfing blindly,
fluorescents shining
swaying gently
back and forth.
Grinding, crunching,
squeal-squelching,
stopping, starting.
And then some more.
Speeding loudly,
hurling, fleeting,
streaming past
certain stations,
jerking stopped
at certain others.
like the wind
on tons of metal
inside the mouth
of ancient giants
down the gullet
through space and time,
we move on
while we sit quietly.
Nuzzled at my neck and shoulder
or playing on your magic phone.
Passersby and fellow travelers:
some are sitting on their own,
others crash and enter laughing,
some converse to themselves,
reading, writing, playing puzzles,
magazines.
earphone-companions,
words for friends.
Lines of lyrical language
stream on like tracks upon a page,
blackness ahead, white lines in front.
And this once empty car
fills up with people
with every single stop we make.
One holds one. One stands swaying.
One sits digging
in her floral leather purse.
Some don’t move for many a moment
and some sleep staring right straight ahead.
Closed mouthed and open-eyed.
There’s a lull in time
a lapse in action,
where the rock-steady sway
of the Express takes hold
and the only voices heard on the train
are the train itself.
Exploding, shouting like a stream,
a river.
We shoot on through on our way uptown.
Tracks take hold
we grind and crunch,
again we stop.
But it’s ours.
And they ride on.
Michael Vitaly Sazonov 