Train to 95th

Downtime at a Mexican restaurant bathroom: What am I doing here?
Trapped onto the toilet seat, panting, drooling pools of hot sauce
breathing so that my fierily mouth will settle.
Miraculously, I hit a proper pause to wipe and escape
this gas chamber. I skid out of the restaurant
still feeling an eruption at the lower intestines absorbing the acids rapidly
enough that when I ran to the “L” I wondered if it was even safe to
ride to 95th without an extra pair of pants.
The temptation, however; overwhelms me.
Had the last rapture installed a platform for a new beginning—I stood
forward facing it as the train shallows the silence, shutting the
doors with me internally screaming for something more. Too
loud to call this close in, buzzing locations adhering evident
trances of uncertain pathetic desires that are too unspoken
to believe. Two stops in, I become the nauseated minority, clenching
on the windows as the train rocks back and forth out of the subway onto
the rails centered between opposing sides of the expressway. Chinatown
dirt and grease swarms to my left like an oil portrait dripping oozes like
a deep-fried hamburger. A black woman sits facing me, looking as she
is about to warn me but stays silent maybe as she hopes that it is her son
that will rob me on the other end. I lose myself in the unforgivable scenery
looking at the commuters on the Dan Ryan driving aimfully towards something
I wouldn’t know better myself. Plastic bags on trees grow out like leaves, falling
like foliage onto McDonald wrappers . A homeless man comes in on 63rd,
holding his cup as everybody drops something in. “That all I know could be my
daddy,” a girl announces behind me after dropping a fistful into his cup. The sun
begins to fall now, as the numbers increase on the platform stops. I look twice
to believe the plasma screens indicating the next train approaching, where I
get off at 95th and run to the next train to Howard.

fORGET tHIS

Bumps from underneath my
eye lids configured darkness
to conceive brightness
as to lasso those concepts to
decompress them to singular
percepts—unassisted affects
constricting towards an illuminated
vowel; isolated from the truth
calling on to it for reference.

Maybe my hands are meant to be cold,
meant to shiver at the absence of light
to crinkle and fold between the winds
daring me to surrender
but no
to consider, to contemplate, to mull
for affixes a ground for a road for a clearance
to hit my inertial body when I expect it most.

Fit into this tube, pour out detached
spiraling suspended in this spacious vacuum.
Lay down amuse, bemuse, annoyed
and far from entertained. Question the answers,
answer the fucking questions, question thinking about
thoughtful answers, think about thinking.
Think far into a depthful space where it no
never concerns, but produces more thinking
that you forget and wait forever again
to remember.