Subways Serials

Jay Street, Borough Hall (BMT, IND)

Each day

Back and forth

Ft. Hamilton to Delancey,

Delancey to Ft. Hamilton

I sit quietly and watch people

in their underground mode:

Their rush for a seat, the slight apprehension of "what if... we stop?"

The curled up Post or Daily News curtains

(New York Times after 7th Avenue)

providing the necessary isolation.

The morning air is slightly stale, pre-breathed

This afternoon it will be thick with 8-hour collected living.

But that is later.

For now, we go elevated. Like we do.

The morning sun, bright, orange juice-y

jolting everyone out of their submission a bit.

A little ethereal,

A subway traveling in mid-air out of its element

To pick up Providence for its daily commute.

And to me... it's a surprise every time.

A man and a woman board at 4th Avenue

hand-in-hand

Speaking softly to one another

Neither of them reading papers

Just appreciating each other.

We are elevated, they are elevated, rising in their connection

Their love, new or old, bathed in that orange juice-y light

Their slight smiles catch pulpy bits of sun.

Lower Manhattan a table set in front of them

...With it's centerpiece missing.

Now just glasses and plates, forks and knives

The lovers don't notice.

The tunnel swallows us whole. They join hands and stand mute to combat the darkness.

Then, there is Carroll,

Then, there is Bergen,

Then,

Jay Street-Borough Hall, transfer point.

The lady looks at her gentleman longingly

She exits with a war-time drama.

He sulks.

As I witness Jay Street-Borough Hall come between two people

I feel wildly alive!

I witness the intangible become solid in its breaking.

My own pulpy lips smile, not for the parting, but for the anticipation of the reunion.

The breaking reversed with time's mending.

That raising and falling to get from here to there and back again.

The movements from mind to hand... And back again.

The Transit from heart to soul... And back again!

All my thoughts on the matter, one out of

each day

Back and forth

Ft. Hamilton to Delancey

Delancey to Ft. Hamilton

Jay Street Metro Tech (BMT, IND)

Each day... still

Back and forth

Ft. Hamilton out to so many other places now

42nd Street Bryant Park to GCT

34th Street Herald Square to Penn, new, old, future

Transfer to the R for New Amsterdam

Fulton Street for City Hall Park

I used to be a teacher

I am a time traveler now

A Mad Mad Mystic

Peeling back frequencies of sound to peer into the heart of things

Absorbing the rhythms and vibrations to get to the soul of things

The heart of a city started by the deep seeds of profit

Or tracing the outline of a marvel against the sky

Over and over I rebuild

With my finger, tracing the ceilings and the columns

Brick by brick, story by story,

But now I'm listening to the metric rumble under the train car

Da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

For me a dark tunnel is salvation

Da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

A subway train is where I find my home

...Witness to all transits both tangible and intangible

...and I thought alone... always alone.

but on the loop, I found you.

Our twin souls at their edges ever mix

This is the first stop on this uptown six.

At Jay Street Metro Tech

Transfer point

I see me, looking at me...

... and you

And my pulpy lips smile.

All the transits are ours: time, space, IRT, BMT, IND.

All that is broken and unbroken is ours

There is room for all of it

On our spectrum.

Whether in darkness or in light...

I am...

We are... always.

My thoughts now

Back and forth

Ft. Hamilton out to so many other places now.

14 City Hall (IRT 6)

This is the last stop on the downtown six

It will be going back the way it came,

The riders leave but we know all the tricks

Since we’re the only ones who still remain.

No one could know the treasures that we hid

Down deep inside this long-abandoned jewel.

The fourteen arches flown against the grid

Each one a bending arc of love’s strange rules.

My heart’s a station buried on a turn

Your heart’s a tunnel stretching in the dark

A union sealed when naked bulbs do burn

For all to see this universe we mark.

Our twin souls at their edges ever mix

This is the first stop on the uptown six.

FT. Hamilton Parkway (IND-F,G)

Home.

As he writes that word his chest heaves an uncontrolled rise.

His throat chokes back the still birth of a lump.

This is home.

The rider never felt that

until he physically wrote “Ft. Hamilton Parkway.”

Like a schoolboy writes the heading to a composition

and every so often ponders the shape of his name

or the integrity of his thoughts, his beliefs, his body, his heart, his loves, his wins, his family, the color of his eyes in the mirror as they look back at him begging him to appreciate all the miracles that came together to give him the ability to walk the 1126 steps to the station entrance, the one buried under a playground, next to the Prospect.

The one no one can find, the one that when first-time riders emerge, they look at him in desperation crying, “Oh good God, which way is Ocean Parkway? Canton Avenue? Ft. Hamilton Parkway???”

In the twenty-five seconds of saturation in one word he knows he lived most of his 14,600 days, and most of the 11,410 train trips dreaming home was somewhere else.

And since the rider is a dreamer... as sure as the stretch between 15 Street Prospect Park feels like the change of a generation... he will continue to think about the allure of other stations and the lives that go on above them.

But for now,

in this mediation of his

two track, two platform, base

from which he daily comes

and daily goes,

the rider can no longer deny

the simple

Ecstasy

that is

coming home.