The Subway
Lives like a trapped grain at one moment in the hourglass/The world a rushing, rolling smudge/Reds, yellows, blues, greens and browns: streaking past each other, pushing and straining, pulsating, wild./Clotted thoughts of children waiting at home, electricity bills, job interviews, snowed-in driveways, repayment of bank loans, house mortgage, leaking car exhausts, sending money to sick fathers, brand-new peacoats for school/Deep, red resentment rests just below the surface, hovering lightly, like the smell of blood before the shark closes in/ A melted kaledioscope of time, oozes around a box full of people/Thoughts stand still, bobbing like a raft on water/Time spirals down and down and down/Lives in a blackhole, still against the breaking and falling of the stars, still against magnificient movement/ Some screaming out/ Others already dead/Catch me and save me while you still can.
She sits on a corner seat, staring out the window. She is pressed against a man in a tan leather coat. People around her huddle together in the dirty warmth, mingling with patches of melted snow on the greasy, metal floor, and the heady air of cheap perfume. The cold is on the outside, but it crystallizes inside. It changes into a dull metallic smell, into the dead harshness of white light, into soiled skin and sweaty thoughts. Some hold onto bars for support, bracing themselves against the sudden motion of the subway, others grind their feet onto the floor. There is mostly little to be said. Something happens when, in the face of incredible movement outside, the inside is still. Little is said. For everything that is said, seems glaringly conspicuous. Sometimes, even a little out of place. It is as if, any story that may come from you, is superficial and a little empty.
It is as if everybody is set upon proving that this stillness is only temporary, that it is only a means to move from one point to another, from one moving life to another moving life. It is as if, everybody is strangely ashamed of being still and useless. So no one speaks.
She watches how they all avoid looking at each other. We do not butt into any one's lives. She once wanted that, the lack of interference. She still does. But there is something a little surreal about being perfectly still in little box moving at a magnificient speed, with the world a smudge around you, and people caught in the exact same stillness-in-speed, and choosing to remain isolated. It scares her. There is no comfort to be derived from bodies anymore, from lives.
Trains have been replaced by subways. You look out the window to see shades of grey erasing and restating themselves. Rearranging. Realligning. There is nothing new to light a match in the mind. Lives estrange themselves from other lives, we live for ourselves. The patterns start to repeat themselves when the same threads weave in and out of themselves. There is only so much to be said about grey. Or about one life. We need new Gods. And new stories.
She sits on a corner seat, staring out the window. She is pressed against a man in a tan leather coat. People around her huddle together in the dirty warmth, mingling with patches of melted snow on the greasy, metal floor, and the heady air of cheap perfume. The cold is on the outside, but it crystallizes inside. It changes into a dull metallic smell, into the dead harshness of white light, into soiled skin and sweaty thoughts. Some hold onto bars for support, bracing themselves against the sudden motion of the subway, others grind their feet onto the floor. There is mostly little to be said. Something happens when, in the face of incredible movement outside, the inside is still. Little is said. For everything that is said, seems glaringly conspicuous. Sometimes, even a little out of place. It is as if, any story that may come from you, is superficial and a little empty.
It is as if everybody is set upon proving that this stillness is only temporary, that it is only a means to move from one point to another, from one moving life to another moving life. It is as if, everybody is strangely ashamed of being still and useless. So no one speaks.
She watches how they all avoid looking at each other. We do not butt into any one's lives. She once wanted that, the lack of interference. She still does. But there is something a little surreal about being perfectly still in little box moving at a magnificient speed, with the world a smudge around you, and people caught in the exact same stillness-in-speed, and choosing to remain isolated. It scares her. There is no comfort to be derived from bodies anymore, from lives.
Trains have been replaced by subways. You look out the window to see shades of grey erasing and restating themselves. Rearranging. Realligning. There is nothing new to light a match in the mind. Lives estrange themselves from other lives, we live for ourselves. The patterns start to repeat themselves when the same threads weave in and out of themselves. There is only so much to be said about grey. Or about one life. We need new Gods. And new stories.
posted by Shekure Darashikoh at 12:29 PM
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