The aspiring hero must contend daily with deliverers of distance if he is ever to find repose among the heavenly bodies of constellations. He has little choice. He decides not the destination, merely the vessel, means, not the end.
He considers first, his obsessions with interesting people and fresh air. He may call on a droning cab driver for travel down such avenues. They would welcome his company, but currency is needed for relationships like those to stay afloat, and he had so little to spare. Without that force of wealth in the foreground, the hero’s choices grew thin like the hair his elders.
His feet have never failed him though. His muscled calves can surely carry him, but they can not satisfy the constraints of time.
There are the smoking, furious others, the giants that live and move quickly underground. Within these groaning beasts, whose bellies we mortals willingly enter with a conviction of convenience, we are closer together, so undoubtedly uncomfortable. We stand or sit, without cushions or chatter, as it shuffles along on its path through the Underworld, past the dwelling of Zeus’ older brother whose fortune left him the lesser of three devils who cut the world in thirds. He was given a wasteland to grow up in unsavory conditions, along with sovereignty over the dead. He can’t help
feeling detached.
The hero is not made of stone. A numbness takes hold over time. With enough exposure to the bony, drafty scenery, the apathetic cousin of Menis creeps into his chest, dulling his senses to some things while exposing raw nerves to others. Suddenly, as though he’d been raised in a rainstorm, the thunder sound of the underground may strike his ears without his once wincing. Yet the smell of souls condemned is all the more pungent in his nostrils. Here is the stamp of his resignation, the meat of his descent. He and his fellow passengers ride on in darkness, drifting to sleep in their own skin while the beast swallows and spits them out, one by one. They are convinced that they can not navigate through the earthly city as long as they long for the sky.
is really inconvenient and stressing me out…but I suppose that’s the whole point of a strike in the first place: an individual or group looking to prove itself to be valuable through the withholding of certain services. I was wholeheartedly convinced of your importance a long time ago though.
So I say to you SEPTA, congratulations, now cut it out. It’s not that I’m really fiending to take the subway again so I can enjoy the sights (half-eaten chicken bones and sunflower seed shells littering the floor) and smells (what I hope isn’t, but am pretty sure is, urine) of City Hall station again, but I do miss having options. The rail is really the only game in town at this point for us commuters. 30th Street station was like a clogged artery this evening. There was a hunger in people’s eyes that I won’t soon forget. People were pushing and shoving, many amongst them believing that their personal hurry was the most pertinent. This happens all the time, but there are usually more venues for it so it at least feels more spread out.
I don’t know why you are dissatisfied, but I sincerely hope that things work out and the flexibility is restored, not just for me, but for everybody. I just want the blood to flow regularly and for everybody’s day to go a bit smoother.
With Love,
Flustered in Philly
Yet another room without windows.
His first mistake was subduing the lights.
The light in our eyes,
or at least in mine,
should have been encouraging enough to perform less dryly.
These words now fall from my head to paper
as evidence enough to prove he hadn’t.
The eyes diverged in pairs,
two by two to avoid the flood of information
deemed as either useless or redundant.
These eyes were the school children we used to be.
They wanted so passionately
to have something of interest to say when their mother,
the mind, met them at the table for supper,
but given this tedious lesson
and what they had so far seen,
they couldn’t go home,
couldn’t face maternal disappointment,
so their gaze went to the bulbs in the ceiling,
made dim from their choked supply of particles,
to the variety of hair ahead of them,
to the eyes of all the others. All this
until the clock feels generosity or pity,
telling of the time to go
following the sound of rustling paper,
a creaking of chairs,
and sunlight.
I am always understating
when I say your face is pretty,
and you might believe
I’m just spouting an opinion
from behind tinted lenses,
but I took those off a long time ago
so I could see more clearly.
I couldn’t stand the idea of anything
getting in the way,
so I kid you not,
in all honesty,
your face is pretty
demanding,
always commanding me to compliment you
at the rounding of every corner,
and the rising of every celestial body that I ignore
in favor of its view.
I’m thankful for everyday of it,
for each day I’m privy to
the world’s most ingeniously crafted piñata.
The kind you know to be full of such wonder,
but could never stomach to see broken.
You’re just glad to be so close,
so much so that you turn and face the crowd,
with your baseball bat in hand and vow
that anyone amongst them still craving candy
had best make for the nearest convenient store,
because whoever tries to satisfy their sweet-tooth
in these parts would see it promptly knocked loose.
I’m thankful also for your parents.
On the strength of their foundation,
they created child who would stand
no chance of ever being ugly or unloved.
She would hold a stronger probability of going to Hell
via taxi cab,
hailed in the midst of a hailstorm
in the worst part of town.
I witnessed a boy trying jello for the first time at work today. His amazed “whoa”, delivered in a way that only a five year old voice can utter it as the jelly shook on his spoon made my whole day better.
Before we had even been properly introduced,
you took it upon yourself to ask something of me.
Your question had nothing to do with my firm beliefs
in the healing ability of music
or why I loved Star Wars so much.
It was more blunt than all that.
“Is your brother still white?”
The fist
struck a chord-
ingly a cross
the face,
my body.
Thoughts caught on paper,
twisted in k nots
of yes and know.
Recovery from such questioning is never easy.
The comeback wasn’t quick,
in fact, I lacked the ability to produce one.
I was too distracted, you see
by a slickness of grease
under my slipping
and further questioning:
Why am I “the whitest black guy you’ve ever met”?
Who are ‘my people’?
The “black enoughs”
who made varsity with me in high school,
but never conversation?
Or the pale mother and son
who show me love each day
and a freezer full of ice cream sandwiches
every summer?
They are
somewhere
in between.
What the hell
Are you so afraid of,
Me?
I don’t care what you would expect,
But I do.
Think.
You would see
Shards of your own reflection
If you didn’t make such waves.
I’m not into bondage,
but you call my hair kinky.
I’m so much more than
my hair,
nose,
lips,
skin,
foot speed.
(certain words that drag the voice down
too………..a whisper.)
Look at me. See me,
Don’t handle me.
Talk me down,
Talk down to me,
Talk me out of it,
Just talk to me.
You would see me
sent home with my throat cut.
As if jersey numbers were enough.
Violence is not just
doing physical harm to others.
Common sense-
less hatred.
You never know
this truth,
always lying and re-
lying on someone like me to remind you.
These walls/can only divide us/for so long.
I don’ wanna play anymore.
Tuck me home.
Take me in.
Kiss me
Goodnight while holding my hands in yours.
I have rights
from wrongs you know.
Wipe away the tears
I’m not allowed to indulge in.
Tell me
I’m special
with tiny explosions.
Tell me my smile is the loudest
by showing me your own when you look at me.
Tell me these things because of what I’ve already learned,
that black skin must sometimes be thicker than most,
that no matter where you’re going
there are such hard steps to take,
that I must become giant
before gentle,
and that sometimes,
this skin of mine must be scratched to feel
soothed again.
Feeling
the circular minutes sliding
between the tiny ridges of our fingertips,
we concluded that they burst
from shyness when seen by others.
somewhere out
there is a floating soapy sphere
no one has ever looked upon
that has not yet popped,
confident in his thin skin
possessing a consistency
that is just
right.
With no aptitude for melody
and double crossed
in the meeting of
intersecting lines.
The birds outside my window.
I am one son in the universe.
Genetic codes have cheated me.
With feet firmly planted,
I want answers.
I find no spark while I stand static.
Grand coincidence,
preventing the art of flight or saving the world.
Elusive superpowers,
shaking like a leaf,
sing most clearly when it rains,
like star crossed lovers
to be crossed.
My reception has always been a tad fuzzy
when speaking to life’s revolution.
Don’t wake me up.
I am so easily broken
by a shortness of days and dollars,
dwarfed by the greatness of
the galaxies that do not revolve around me.
