Track 28

Track 28

 

the eroded faces of men

sinking into smoke and martinis,

replenished lips kissing the dented

pillow and the ink of their mouths

wasted in streams

the water that feeds

dead rivers, the wind

that whittles rocks

and the rough shadow

of whiskered faces

on the five twenty

out of grand central

boarded up buildings of

childhood flashing like

billboards in the Bronx

now I am suddenly thick

with memory

something in these wet windows

and fog smothered roofs

in the glistening slate and

brick I hear the mumble

of commuters and

smell the long tunnels

scraped steel and railroad ties,

puddles, the trench coats

and shopping bags and brief cases

walking slowly up the track

and squeezing into the bar car

where we lurch and

what we are lurching into

the tides, the wind,

wet wool and anonymous

emergencies, collide.

suddenly I am not where

I am and wherever I am,

that is home.

the indistinct time

patters on the glass

inconsequential conversations

the speech of public places

suggestions left behind

“watch the closing doors”

between cars rocking

this glass is splashed

with light I am enticed

I enter and behold the

faces enclosed in a globe

of rain, the shaped

lips and jowls  of

folk who lie

in graves like

the littered war dead or

in beds in the wards

of forgetful eighty year olds

others with glasses of

old yeller wandering the

ambien dark in muumuus

suspended among them

I drop, the earth

expanding, swallowing the clouds

above but the others do not

call, we web and merge

and separate as we

spread apart and hurl down