Category: underground

Something in the truth stirs the sound receptor in my mind and I only hear the sound of mumbled marbles through choking mouths — like when I rushed to my Harlem bedroom window after hearing a plane passing really low, hand to mouth, rushed and stood pressed to glass — I could only hear the rumble of plane and whir of my imagination. And this only a month ago.  I suppose it was nothing.  Or at least no one ever heard about it.  So whether violins or groans from underground brought me there it was something about the truth that stirred in me on this train headed to lots of places.

But now all I hear is the “routine” from a man in the subway.  He parked himself in the middle of this uptown 4 and immediately took to two children on the laps of their parents.  Now those kids are gone, scared off at Bowling Green with its orange painted brick stretch of walls, but the man continues, he’s moved up and down the train after apologizing for interrupting the day, the passage, the read, the concert etc. and has proceeded to entertain the train with imitation train noises for starters… This was actually met with delightful curiosity by the sister in a pair of children, whose haircuts were almost the same save a distinguishable few curls that sort of went through her head precociously, making her a cute but muppet-looking little rascal.  And as the doors closed they “chimed” together, the man and the kid, and the ultimate showman exclaims proudly but still in his gruff tone, “she’s my partner, ladies and gentlemen. One more time…” and she never repeated the sound.  Even I entertained the notion to help the faltering show. But he was fine, he was obviously some sort of falsetto genius and man about town — the underground town.  Now he’s on to jokes and has quite a few people laughing or at least smiling.  Even me through my Mozart, through it all.

I enjoy listening to Mozart underground because it seems to add a sense of driven purpose or at least justification for things I’ve seen down here. I like when the tender lush swells match a starting train before it catches hold of higher speeds.  And twinkling piano trills ringing against the sea of squeals and even now the train runs smooth and these strings rage onward through the dark layered forest.  The soot is a stream of midnight water and we go forth into the nothingness until the mechanics gives way to the logistics and the MTA fails Mozart.  But here again the flight of keys black and white, up and down, a confluence of birds like people, perched or running, never flying.  Reaching stretching all within Mozart’s grasp, it’s all within my grasp until even Mozart has to stop.  And the steady mechanics of the track click track click track click takes hold of my heart and steadies the chaos once more.

But whether it be truth or chaos. The subway and Mozart are great antidotes.

You were coming from work and as you left the train at Atlantic my eyes warmed over like yours had been warmed over, swelling to an innocuous jade and brown beneath the phosphorescence. I was crying your tears and the doors closed and I looked down to let them fall and instead of cold release, you came through me and it was like putting glasses on for the first time. Everything was washed clean, like a windshield wiper or a dish being pulled out of fresh cold water in one of those commercials but no dripping at all, and my face remained dry; it all soaked into me.

You were crying the minute I stepped into the train no doubt, because when I reached my seat across from you, you were wiping your eyes already.

It took me the entire ride to gather the courage to talk to you, and actually it was you who spoke first.  Coming over to the map behind me you peered through your big eyes that shined a sad glaze, and you stepped back still unsure.  I said, “what are you looking for?” at which you replied, “does this stop at Atlantic?”

After our exchange and my double checking the map, for I had just moved to a neighborhood along this line myself, the train was indeed headed to Atlantic.  To make matters better, God chimed in and announced as the conductor, “Stand clear.  Next stop Atlantic.”  We laughed and I came over next to you. “Are you alright?” “Oh, I’m fine,” you started and I continued, “because I saw you crying before and –” “well, yes…” and then we breathed.  I felt berated, for the blink of an eye, about my brazen observance. “It’s been a long day,” you offered and I sort of sigh an exhalation.  “I’m sorry” I seem to say, “uhhmmphh” I kind of mumble through a closed mouth “I’m really sorry to hear that.”

“I know what you mean,” I would’ve said, but I simply say “yeah…” and offer you my handkerchief which has been idly in my grasp for a few minutes now, since I had been back over on my side.  Since I wanted to help, but could only look over and wonder.  I did, while I was over on my side, ask God to “give me her pain.”  I’m not sure why but I do that from time to time.

You sort of laugh and entertains my offer with a generous wave and air of aristocracy and I smile too at the thought of having a handkerchief nowadays.  You smile through pressed lips and I do too.

Now the same handkerchief is in my hand again beneath my phone as I type this.  Anchors and rope, blue and red coil.  And in a wide cross-check pattern the rope goes through and through the white handkerchief lined in navy blue and thin lines of red.  We’re coming up from 14th street and I wonder about you.  I wonder if you have stopped crying?  Or if you’re having dinner yet?

I hope you’re doing well.  And yet I can’t help but think, “I wish I could’ve done more.”

Gliding under years of progress,
clanking starting ever more
Catching hold of winter’s sadness
Letting go within the fold.

The Shepard takes your hand and guides you there,
the spirit lifts you up and lights your fire,
and think in the least and the father will provide.

Take these words from me
For I need some supplication,
Forgiveness for what I’ve done.
Nothing bad just lost the love of my life.

And there are moments in the shower or kitchen, this morning in particular,
When she comes to me in passing
As if she’s no ghost of memory at all
Just simply going to the bathroom in the morning.
There’s nothing wrong with that
She’s finding herself too.
Taking time for the things that need the most in life.
Yourself. Selfish as it may seem,
If we don’t take care of ourselves
How are we to take care of others?

The train takes over or at least interrupts.
81st street. Next stop will be yours.
And god leads me to total subconscious
Deliverance.
Taking me and making me feel you so far away.

Like ships between different currents
Wading deeper as we go
Hold me under I’ll tear asunder
The sail when it’s time to go.

And as we settle I view us passing
With the little dog upstairs
Just come from the park on our day off
In comes tourists and I’m underground again.

And do I tread, gliding.
Gliding into air. Air and space
A museum we’ve never been to together.
What are you up to now?

I wrote to you from the other side,
Did you receive my letter?
It was sent express over the wire
I’m sure it got lost in translation.

I’m off to get work.
And think of you.

There aren’t rocks to throw.
There are only rocks with which to build.

Bundled in fur, we were just leaving the fifth avenue station on an R train wading in the current of the third rail.

Always flirting with danger, needing to be too close like Icarus, wanting to know too much like Adam, I look into these people’s faces and listen to their stories.

Still and stoic with thin black gloves grasping metal poles like a harpoon staff against the wiles, with even thinner black heels to anchor her to ground. I am writing this as she subtly lifts up her left leg. Almost stretching against the unendurable events in this jungle made of stone.  And glass.  And mirth and blood and years of tears and floods.

A city of cleanliness and clandestine.  Of style girth and panache.

And here she was, wrapped in swaddling furs. Her face was what I noticed first. It was a blank canvas of features. Unconnected by muscles human.  Inside no doubt there raged a fire, even one so faint to be — not merely alive but a little bit free — of fear and woes from hunger or bigotry — but that heat beneath the icy exterior was a luminous veneer.

I have lost her now from the maddening crowds a quickening their pace and trace of earthly elements within their shallow chests.  My moon cut from alabaster.  My ocean of spectral sadness.

Approaching 14th street was like riding ledger papers during business meetings.  Or musical staves, lights flickering on happenstantial spaces along a rumbling bass line, your own train, like a monster hungry for music.  You invent a melody and it continues while you stop, beyond the mess of people gathered on the platform lighted anew, washing away old melodies still lingering in your head skipping through colorful swaths of the human palate.  And then a face interrupts you… or a real song does.

And in they come, the troubadours, “the ‘something’ harmonizers,” announcing their ways into your mornings with, “a little gospel tune — we like to do gospel hymns in the morning.”  And he sort of apologizes for his sore throat and they begin.

“This light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine.”

(And the girl standing in the foyer opens her mouth as if to have a conversation over the breakfast table.  Across from someone she knows, and has known for a long time, she coos quietly but I hear her, and I join her.)

This little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!”

Passed Rector Street, people blur behind glass and we reflect the tracks from both in the window ahead of me and this thick pane of glass just inches away.

A thunderstorm thrashes heartily against us. Blinded by the darkness save the respite of tile fluorescence, the unknown world outside these tubular metal walls and unseen storm that grumbles underfoot is sated and quieted, it seems, by mosaic symmetricality and strips of white lights and steel columns painted over.

There seems to be life between the storms that pass, between the patches of night and rotten dreams. But if you look close enough, as if awaking from a dream, there’s a world between the string of days. Texture towards the night.

Nary a world oft seen,
That lies right in between
The waking moments
And restless sighs,
The us that does release,
That looking in those eyes
Locks the torrents in surmise,
And quakes the lost within demise,
Of fear and trepidation — flight
Sans mediation,
And love — repudiation.

Just me.
At night.

A wind that rocks me back on my feet
Comes from the train that passes.

And as it slows I regain my balance
And I wait for the doors to open.

It’s been like that this City thus far,
Rushing and working and waiting.

I race out of the car propelling myself forward by the door’s edge.

I tend to run wherever I’m going.
As if someone is chasing me.

I rise from the Underground
Facing the Empire State Building,
But I don’t notice it today,
Today I keep my head down,
And my feet move quick against the traffic on wet pavement.

A cringe-worthy wind that makes others run for cover
Cuts around these buildings as I cut towards it.

And as it slows I’ve already turned the corner and pedestrian traffic slows.

Sparsely peppered with less shopper/tourists,
Rushing and working and waiting.

Weaving through and sashaying around, propelling myself by the wind’s edge.

I tend to slow when I get where I’m going.

I rose from the Underground
Facing the Empire State Building,
And I hear it underground again,
And I raise my head
My feet have reached the door, my hand has reached its handle.

The Train.

This City.

Rushing and working and waiting.

Quick against the traffic on wet pavement.

Weaving through and sashaying around, propelling myself by the wind’s edge.

I rise from the Underground,
But the Express Train
Rumbles on.