After a long day, I wait.
This dreary passage that I take,
my trust in a vessel that seems so frail,
the rail it follows; bound for home.
But the wait– it seems too much to bear,
the train: too slow to get me there.
Yet down I go, to this place below the city life
to pay my way, and begin the wait;
to bide time until my train arrives.
It’s been a long day, yet excitement builds
to be home, to rest, but still
I tighten my composure and harden my gaze,
almost out of instinct, to my surprise.
I’ve adapted, and go unnoticed, in this place–
this place which knows no care.
A bit further down I venture on
Where even escalators scream a dismal moan;
the unkept squeal of steel on steel.
Though none take heed of its distress
the stairs keep screaming without breath.
And in those depths, not only me and others, just as weary,
are those without a better place to go.
No home for which this train to take;
the train itself is rest between waits.
These people whose minds are filled with the same screams of those stairs,
blaring voices they alone endure,
expressed in the anguish of their demeanor.
I watch them, not looking, in expectant arms;
ready for their flagrant bursts of demented harm
to pass me by and perturb another– any other.
Better not to chance a glance in another’s eye
I look ahead, or down, or away.
I wait
I wait
In the tombs of this city’s soul,
we waiters congregate, avoiding each other.
They cover their eyes from the dreary scene,
plug their ears from the squealing machines;
accustomed to their routine.
They’ve long accepted its permanent ails.
Yet I, still new to this place and to this status quo,
rebuke its inhumanity in self-righteous assurity
that I could make a modest critique.
After all, I’m a learned man;
an engineer, no doubt, who develops plans
to solve the world’s problems
with a knowledge of matter.
So I take stock of this matter, and consider
how I would best fix this necessary place to wait.
I wait
“Shouldn’t this train be here by now?”
I think about timing, and planning, and routes
and consider the planners, and wave off my doubts.
And shift my mind to the state of the station.
Not far beneath the notorious grime
I recognize the forms of a careful design.
Why?
Why did we let it go all to hell?
“Tell me,” I ask, muttering to myself.
We wait. We wait every day
and with each that passes, there’s more to hate.
Perhaps this train just wasn’t made for me
or for people at all.
It was made for the city, its industries, and its streets.
to hide the commuters underneath
the aesthetic appeal: The Ideal City;
or so it seems.
If it’s our routine, then it’s culture,
a curriculum, I’ve helped make.
Made, to craft a new man; remade
in the imagination of that painter– no image at all.
So it occurs to me then,
what I could do with my wait.
To undo some of the doing that’s been done for a while,
I look at my brother, and smile.