in transit
i am
always in transit
mostly going somewhere i don’t want to go
going back to somewhere
huddled on a subway or a bus
with the other fools
trapped in my own trivial malaise
or being held captive by some annoyance
tonight it is a pack of teenagers
who are screaming and running between trains
they are hitting each other…again
there is no poetry in the art of redundancy
mine or theirs
so do not think of this as a poem
maybe it is a cry for help
or it is life and life only
i have at least three to four people a day tell me
thank god the day is moving fast
or they complain about how slow it is going
and they have the softest march toward death
that i’ve ever seen punch the clock
soft people and their soft problems
most of them have never worked anywhere else
they take their cars and sit in traffic
playing on their cell phones
listening to sports and hate radio
the only victim in the scenario being their time wasted
on a planet that kills millions
offers death sentences to so many others
each and every day
i’ll put that on my bucket list, they say
we are masters at killing the moments that count
the ones that don’t but are still as valuable
in the end that stench you smell
might just be regret
that is to say, maybe i’m happy to be on this train tonight
healthy and blind, stinking sober
somewhat alive though assaulted by teen noise
while trying to read the poetry of nazim hikmet
beethoven’s missa solemnis
playing faintly in my headphones
here and fully vested in this moment
for as long as this life will let me.
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