Category: travel

Hurling between stopping and starting
We clatter grind and chug along
The depths of this L track.

And bones collapse beneath the weight of plain old gravity
Muscles and tendons and sinews unknown
The levels as lists are endless no doubt
For learn well within you
And far out you’ll go
As easily as treading through the beast of the sea.

Hurling forward at a steady clip
Towards Brooklyn we right go
Seven or so I can’t look up
Gravity’s got my ears.
(And I swallow to pull them back down).

 

The sweet and heavy smell of trash pervades the roof of my mouth. It was slowly nearing nine in the morning, and I was walking west towards Times Square at 46th street, which was already a bustle and tussle of tourists and suits. The morning’s subtle splendor that befalls the city at dawn had fallen hard by now, and in its place was

I stopped moving a block or so away and noticed a puddle on the ground, nestled on the corner alongside a high concrete curb. A building ripples with the warm breeze, swaying gently on the asphalt, while across the street life-size fuzzy cartoon characters stand idly by, their dirt and greed veiled by goofy painted smiles.

I make my way down to the one train against a flood of those just departed. “Where do you think you’re going?” Says one with his eyes. “You just missed it — what’s your hurry!?” cries one with his shoulder. I slow to barely walking letting gravity take my legs as I make my way down the short staircase. It’s hotter underground, I think and continue against the wind that burns my eyes and ears. Indeed, the dragon had just departed.

I make my way against the stragglers from the front of the train, who are obviously in no hurry, and I sit at the furthest seat on the furthest bench. I lower my head and close my eyes, because of that hot wind I had walked all this way through mostly closed lids. I hear a drummer across the way, thumping and clanking, slow yet melodious rapping against empty trash cans or paint buckets, but the beat remained fixed in a way that seemed odd, so I scanned the opposite platform across the four sets of tracks and saw a woman in grey work clothes wheeling a huge trash barrel on wheels, thumping and clinking against the grooves in the cement, thump-clink-clink and a long drag. Thump clink clink drag… (No drummer at all, just the music of work and the sounds of refuse.)

Still sitting on the bench I hear, “Because of a train derailment at 125th street…” The announcement came buzzing loudly from the ceiling, and I noticed an elderly woman next to me covering her ears, preparing for an auditory onslaught. Then I saw it. The train across the way, the downtown express, came hurtling towards us. The woman’s eyes remained fixed on the metal spirit as it launched into the air, and they shone bright against its flickering lights. Clank clank thrash! The two ton monstrosity ripped towards us making shreds of itself against intermittent metal poles like silver cheese through an industrial grater. Grumbling whirling wheeling and squealing. Flecks of metal, bits of glass are whizzing past but all I could hear was this dark and heavy drone, like a dying whale, like a mechanical sigh. Thrashing overhead, heaving itself like a lost soul expelled from centuries of oppression, that sound rained down as the train moved so slowly through the air. My eyes glued to one car in particular, one set of eyes within the car as the train moved slowly towards us, a young girl moved off her seat, through the car. Car and girl into the air. Her eyes raised and revealed no terror, just a slow and steady recognition with a mouth slightly agape.

She had on a black dress with small white patches that looked like a photo-negative of a Dalmatian’s markings or puffy clouds in a moonless midnight sky. Her dress remained still, her eyes remained fixed, full and open. Her white wire headphones swayed forward gently and she glided like an astronaut through the car towards the window.

Upon impact, a floodgate was released and everything came crashing back to tempo. All the sounds that had been muted rang out loud and hard. A squealing descant of emergency brakes locking, vainly grabbing hold of the bits of track that it could. People screaming, on the platform in the train. And the train itself was a cacophonous symphony of destruction. Strange blasts of cold air from the cars’ air conditioning came whistling passed up and escaped like spirits through the sewer grate above.

It was like an assault. Heat and frigid air, deep drones and delirious descants, screaming and open-mouthed shock. It all came pressing against me.

…

 

ricocheting through time, like pinballs lost through shards of glass like stars flickering against dark soot-filled tunnel.

she — who was no longer a girl or woman but limbs and an expression of lost wonder.

blood like florescent lights surround vacant space on faces like masks of themselves, frozen in time.

 

 

I

ten car metal spirits
box car dragon tails,
breathing fire underground
swaths of smoke and hot air,
a squealing flight begins.

eyes like search lights
gullets cool and clammy,
climbing in
we wish to be moved
in one way or another.

strangers packed and eaten too
bitten by cause of movement,
together digested inside this beast
we stream on down the line.

they talk they swear
undead and unaware
they cling they climb
frozen in place and time.

brown painted bellies
by tracks so rusty
silver ‘neath the guise belies
the black and dusty
soot filled
rancid
putrid cold and old
spruced upon and painted too
they’re all the same
whether old or new.

in and out. all the same.
all within, naught’s to blame,
this city’s dirt lies within us all,
to ashes and dust we all will fall.

II

express trains pass
clanking dragons metal riding
spirits in heat screaming for freedom
perpetual timelessness underground
the wee small hours, the more you wait
in rushing hours, people populate.

there’s so much writing on the wall,
mindless drummers to heed whose call?
brick and tile slick with fluorescents
floors wet with vomit and humanoid essence

men layered thick with multiple tshirts
women reading the times stretched across two seats
one smells likes urine neither you’d like to meet.
dresses in summer satin
bare toes in dirty sneaks
i love new york and flannel patterns
buttoned up and wired too
thin ankles and wide thighs
another one to two seats.

chuck taylors and wing tipped shoes
fashion boots and flip flops ooze.
grown men beg for money
while pretty women deftly hide,
some look away some dig for change,
trying hard not to notice some rearrange
themselves and retreat inside themselves,
or to their phones pads and nooks
shirking guilt with frowning looks.

what a shame, get a job
scream the stares that are so quiet,
I’d like to help but I’m broke myself
mumbles my constant internal riot
the tunnel screams and mutes us all.

men with leering eyes and neatly pressed button downs
smell of cheap light beer and stare through the gowns
of sleeping beauties drunk with night
and others who stare ahead with fright

some are pressed so close to others
taking advantage with sensual smothers
lonely lusters and loose lanky loners
staring dumbfounded with if-only mental boners

everyone’s flush sweaty or tired
the rest seemed distressed
zombie-like, wired.
some push and shove
some smile meekly,
we’re all in this together
public transport underground,
but some see no feather
alike like they’re better.

hats and brands fly like flags.
while entitlement aches like pride,
lost white stripes and bands of red
and the stars you know drag
from storytales so dead.

III

Then beneath once again
You find a seat you find a friend,
Atop the soot, free from the rain,
The underground’s simple charm remains.
The express buzzes by
Clicks on through
Races high and out of view.
Nighttime concerts interrupt
Trombones and electric guitars.
Summertime and the livin’s easy,
Hush metal spirit
Let ‘em play, let him sing,
Stars shine on in
And ring a ding ding.

Out and in. All the same.
All without, but who’s to blame,
this city’s dirt lies within us all,
ashes to ashes we all will fall.

blue painted skies
by dreams so dusty
silver ‘neath the guise belies
the brown and rusty
smoke filled
gusty
insipid hot and fresh
pissed upon and painted too
they’re all the same
whether old or new.

some talk some swear
undead and unaware
all cling and hang until
frosty whistles — exit — shrill.

strangers packed and eaten too
bitten by cause of movement,
together digested inside this beast
we stream on down the line.

eyes like search lights
gullets cool and clammy,
climbing in
we wish to be moved
in one way or another.

ten car metal spirits
box car dragon tails,
breathing fire underground
swaths of smoke and hot air,
a squealing flight

for some it stops for some it begins
moving, moving.

All the time.