The Subterraneans
Welcome to the entrails of the city.
To arrive here entails a descent.
With a sole swipe
we’ve the privilege
of immersing ourselves
in the collective unconscious.
Down here,
we are Orpheus.
We are Persephone.
We are Jonah
swallowed whole.
Characters in search
of an author.
The subway
a shadowy stairway
to subconsciousness itself.
Here, below the surface
things take on primordial meanings.
This is where Ionesco
gathered his twelve chairs,
where Tennessee wrestled the Iguana,
and Shakespeare stirred his tempest.
Where those tiny circus lizards
mature into alligators
years after being mistaken for dead.
Where witches concoct their incantations
to get even with, well, other witches.
Here are where breakdowns
and breakthroughs
begin.
Yet what of the rest of us?
We, who simply want to
get where we are going?
Who sit in postures of surrender
content to appear normal,
to look unthreatened
and unthreatening.
To the trembling Shih Tzu
curled in the refuge
of a woman’s handbag,
I too, am being carried.
As I hold my breath
not to inhale
the curried lamb kabob
being devoured across from me,
I come to the conclusion
to be human
is to be ravenous.
Not wanting to draw
attention, I sit quietly
ruminating on how fate
has brought us all together.
Across the aisle
a man in a torn tee shirt
sizes me up
like a leg of lamb
in a Turkish marketplace.
I look away aware
of the dangers
of meeting
a stranger's eyes.
Why I’m so determined
to keep the doors
of my soul shut tight,
I’m sure I don’t know.
As if I feared
some feral creature
might breach the walls
of my inner sanctum.
My gaze settles on
a tall Swedish couple
assailing the car
with their wholesomeness;
film stars touring the Inferno.
At the back of the train
a trio of noisy teens
are daring us all to judge them,
their eyes ricocheting
from face to face
like flames to a moth.
I catch the word “baguette”
followed by raucous laughter
and wish I could turn up
a bossa nova
to drown out the ignorance
of the world.
We are here
to be ferried.
Our baggage,
all in our heads.
Then again,
who died and made me
solo protagonist of
the subway system?
It’s a reasonable question.
But I’m not here
to simply utilize
mass transit,
I’ve come in search
of beauty.
The first thing I notice:
nearly everyone in the car
is staring at their phones,
heads bowed as if
in Godless prayer.
Why come here
only to ignore
each other?
Who’s to say
our trains of thought
aren’t being
slowly wiped clean
by the gynecological-grade
overhead lighting
simultaneously
turning every window
into a looking glass
reflecting what we all know already.
What I’d give for a pair
of rose-colored glasses,
content to hurl
through the city’s bloodstream
via a parade of curated memories
of rosier times.
But who the hell
wants to live
in a pink world?
And yet why do I view
the car as chock-full
of a jury of my peers,
I sitting alone
in the witness box,
moving to strike
the trial altogether
on the grounds it might
incriminate me?
Better to see us all
crowded on the head of a pin
in some teeming eternity astride
the only moment that is.
"There but for the grace of God go I"
Someone’s sure to utter
but the words are little
more than a stale chestnut
in the mouth.
And then the most META
of things occurs.
I am thrown
from my body
and reshuffled back
into the deck of life.
I come to
splayed across several seats
like an upside-down turtle
with swollen feet;
is this my home…
on my back?
It’s the damnedest thing:
But it seems whatever I
BEHOLD, I BECOME.
The rail-thin red head
digging through her handbag
for nail polish,
is me.
The weary Asian tourist
slipping off his shoe
to relieve a stinging bunion,
is me.
I am the bedazzled drag queen
rocking a neon paisley skirt!
The antsy salesclerk eyeing his watch
as if timing a heist.
The fidgety ragamuffin
kicking his sister's seat
taunting:
"What you say is what you are!"
I’m the man in the wife-beater
devouring a sandwich freed from a Ziplock.
The actor going over his lines
happy to be making better use of the NOW.
The shifty pickpocket hoping to blend in.
The nurse dropping her cell
on the unforgiving floor of the C.
The lonely waif
drawing a heart on the window
in the fog of her breath.
The morose teen spotting
the girl of his dreams
as she exits forever on the L.
Hell, I’m the 7Up can
rolling from
starboard to stern
only to end up
at the feet
of the Buddhist monk
handing out cryptic sayings
on calligraphed business cards!
My nail polish.
My stinging bunion.
My neon skirt.
My watch.
MY cell.
My breath.
The girl of my dreams.
My business cards.
Consciousness widens ever outward
like a mandala absorbing all of existence.
We are LIFE ITSELF in all it’s
homo-sapien variation!
And at last…
we are one.
And so the trains roll on
taking no notice.
Approaching the platforms
like huffing bulls
only to pull away…agile serpents
winding through their darkened lairs.
Here in this labyrinthian underworld
we can choose which train we board
or dare to be carried away on
a rip current
born from the vigor
of a thousand psyches.
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