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.