poem of the day 01.09.15

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.