"So, why are you in here?"
"I can predict the future. They don't like that."
"Who are you?"
"I am intoxicated with the light and the dark."
"What do you expect to find in here?"
"I want nothing more than color and clarity. They know this. They try and keep me from it, but I see beyond them."
"Can we get out of here?"
"No. It keeps going and going. Sometimes you reach a door and you can see through the door, but you can't go through the door."
"Why?"
"You will be consumed by the fury of all."
The subway door opens.
Picking up the crumpled brown paper bag next to me, I stand. I sit down again. I look up and see motion through the window.
The voice box is squawking at me - just white noise. Are they trying to talk into my dream? Is this a break in the manifestation of my reality? What are they saying? Am I tripping through this diffused senstation with nothing more than a bad set of headphones and my hands in my black artificially woven pockets?
'It's not that your sane. Don't you understand? They haven't figured out that you're crazy yet. Borrowed time. Time waits for no-one. Time is on our side. Time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future.' That's what he said to me, though I tried not to listen and concentrated instead on the rats that were running amidst the rails and the trash. Can I spit and make the tracks burn electricity? I remember when I would lay pennies on Upstate train tracks and wait for the trains to whiz by and press me good luck. Another train. Aboard. Another ride to a numerated and lettered destination.
Now I'm looking at the advertisement over the heavy-set Hispanic with the hot dog in his sweaty, clutching hand. Looking closer I can see some sauerkraut has dripped onto his pants, but he hasn't noticed because his eyes are glued on the ass that is abnormally close to his face. We're all packed into the car like a slave galley headed for some satanic Alexandria.
The advertisement is called 'moving poetry,' but graffiti artists have declared the poetry their territory and have painted over a Dylan Thomas piece in favor of a gangland slogan that is only legible to those crazies that understand the complex twirls, abrupt turns and indescribable marks of those sounds of the streets.
The woman's ass has moved even more so uncomfortably close to the man's gleaming face and his eyes have started to bulge in that comical, Three Stooges manner. Her red polyester skirt is so tight that you can see the outline of her panties. The skirt's material is cheap and thin, and the roses on her panties look like blood stains against her cheeks. I can see he wants nothing more than to bite her ass and satiate his lust. More sauerkraut has fallen on to the man's lap and he has stained his loins in a sick, Freudian manner that makes me gag
Why am I here? Such a simple question. But there's no answer, just more people like me futiley trying to convince me and everyone else that they don't belong here. All I truly know is that the woman's ass looks bloodied and that Dylan Thomas no longer carries any juice in this hood.
Off the car, into the tunnel. It's like the finish of it all with the light at the end of a long, musty passageway harkening something a little bit different than you were used to seeing every morning when you woke up. Posters for places that only exist in the head of someone who is not content with where they are....Remember you don't know what you're missing till you've got it.
The email came through the vortex, crashing into this fractured skull
No one told me I was writing songs again.
I hear the song over a scratchy boom box that an unshaven homeless man has strapped to his refashioned grocery cart. He has a string of homemade beads woven into a long string of hair that look like they are pieces of tinfoil wrapped around his grease-laden locks.
I didn't listen to the end of it. It's my life, I should know the outcome. It's the same song of heartbreak that's been told over and over. What did it play like before there were broken records? I know I hurt her, but it was only so I wouldn't hurt her more. Drugs. Yea, blame it on the drugs.
She's just lying there, sometimes scratching her head, usually it rests under the flower-laden blanket. There's a story to be read, and it's not his. It's a newspaper article that doesn't speak his heart or his mind. The lint on his leg annoys him, he reaches down and picks it off. A moment later a hand lays there for a moment then traces a sentence that is so far away from him. Foreign. Undeniably naked. Grab a hand, trip this flavored rainbow with lights akimbo and take me down to the farthest place that pleasure will go.
Sometimes I can feel the words flowing out of me to the point that I don't know what I write or why I write it, just that it must grace a page and give someone else an insight or thought that they were missing. Playing with the soft underside of her arm, a smile tickles her mouth. Is it happening? Who knows but the walls. Throughout time walls have stood as mute testimony to a thousand secret passions, undisclosed rumors, and bare truths. Sometimes they watch nothing at all.
The light is off now. The dull roar has subsided leaving the cabin dark, but her hand is still strangely warm. Wanting to sing her to bed, but not wanting to give away more words than I already have.
In this head I can hear the words go down with the rush of the passing.