I am the very worst of my generation,
diamorphine destroyed, my veins chained to the trainline,
my cotton mouth glued shut in sticky fear.
Town-y landscapes blur streaks of color into rivers
meandering through verdant valleys,
blurring into panoramic parks where children play,
blurring into puerile nostalgias—
all dirt diamonds and Dairy Queen—sweet sixteen’s and having friends,
first day of school blues and basketball shoes
blurring into a stop.
A stop at stop number twelve,
where break away all nature does
at the brooding imminence of the concrete jungle,
the urban mosaic gloaming in stasis, imperial,
putting to death all except those that bring death,
all but those looking for their slaking fix.
Only souls on liquidation live.
Only dilated eyes yearning to shrink again see.
Clouds float into black and “Stand clear of the closing doors, please,”
leaves you hysterically sweating on a platform to the apocalypse.
Lips peel open for the station fountain,
metallic fluid masquerading as life’s essence
zags through chipped teeth as
the malevolent winds of the Megalopolis,
like squeaky clockwork, persuasive and unconcerned,
compel me towards the poppy fields of subsidized housing.
The phantom city crashes down,
scowls like a wave on a jetty,
neither hope nor despair,
broken windows like hollowed eyes,
gaping. Turban-clad drivers with charcoal orbs,
homeless men on homeless men on homeless men,
eyes styes and cataracts,
hold crooked words of conspiracy written on thrown-away Amazon boxes.
As the out-of-tune street performer goes boom boom boom,
as skeletons buried under the concrete reverberate invitations to waltz under pavement cracks,
as bullets bark and sirens scream a dirge.
One foot begets the other,
following the ink-dripped laser beam to the ledge of a steel tower,
bruising the heavens up high
and dreaming of a place where all life is not equally worthless,
where happiness is not a warm gun but a chill grace.
Where youth isn’t priced out,
where maize grows in alleyways between neighbors sharing ‘The Chronic,’
and all is evergreen and laughter
and oceans of frank soundtrack the miracle of self-discipline
in the ambiguous distance from far beyond the phantasmagoria
that covers this bleak horizon looming over this star-spangled wasteland.
For these realms of reverie are attained
not in the black hearse but in the off-white Ferrari,
where beige and breezy beaches meet the clay tan of the Americana mountainside,
where the brown of the good soil meets the gray fog and all its moral dilemma.
As the white dove veers through vapor, seeking refuge in blood,
it whirls me up and whisks me down—down, down, down to meet God at the doorstep.
As the private prison of the public bathroom shelters the transmission of fluid,
transcending all situations dire,
as the soggy commode melts into an island,
so real as to feel the warm sun beating down
torrid ambitions far too lofty for a slave of the trainline to fulfill
in an unelected existence.
And so, instead, savor the self-aware chimera the Rari affords
immaterial life.
As eager half-deads awaiting the lavatory stare through the Penn Station peephole
with crazy eyes of hurry-up,
as unphased clouds float into a carousel of bespoke reality
bearing fruit from the view
and feast on the ripe juices galore,
until not a drop of tang or an itch on nose
or a spirit to contact remains.
Oh, the holy rush and its fleeting glory!
As matter over mind is magic
the feeling is surrendered with indifference to tomorrow’s all-knowing routine,
as the conductor beckons me over the loudspeaker to a platform,
and then chained to the A-train treadmill,
costing fifty cents more than the last.
Sleeping through verdant valleys and panoramic parks,
homeward bound until the morning sun rises.
