travel

  • The Port Authority

    The bus is a rough way to travel–rough on the tires, rough on the mind. It’s rough on the tired mind. This port has full authority over the hard reality of every departure–every flight–the transient lines, the commutation, the brutal architecture. I am still enamored with any film from the 70s starring Steve McQueen. I’m still amazed by the vintage struggle of every beating wing in the Port Authority.

  • Still New Jersey

    Another New Jersey night raid
    Through the hills of melancholy malls
    Outside the realm of American norms
    Home to the still dreaming tribes

    In a concrete dowry
    Her gift is bestowed
    Upon the Prince of travel
    Still the mystery begs to unravel

    Where is your great continental heart?
    That once pumped with Springsteen blood
    Now a stent is laid that I may pass
    Once again trudging through your mass

  • The Cigarette Lady

    There will be no sleeping for me this morning, on the long-haul commuter bus from Kingston to Port Authority. The suspension has a great shark’s bite on the smallest of bumps. The air conditioning is hammering the back of my neck. The “cigarette lady” has chosen her seat directly behind mine.

    Out of the corner of my sleepy eye, I see her yellowed hand imposing a little on my periphery. I smell the sour acrid gag of stained and spotty organs. Her cough begins shortly after departure, lung and trachea protest the imposed sanctions. As the nicotine receptors settle in to the martial law, the listless lack of oxygen will huff the grey cloud of sleep upon the tarred and charcoal soul. She claims the seat next to hers for streaked and straining capillaries of lower extremities, and soon enough she will floats off into the thick atmosphere of dreams, snoring in Chinese.

  • Interstellar Saviors

    In the middle of the morning
    At the start of a day
    I saw the beaming lights of distant
    Loving people finding long waves
    From celebrated corners of the fairest stellar side
    They came to give us pleasant dreams
    Came to help us find
    In those beams of blistered vision
    Pulling up to heaven
    There was no resistance from the lambs
    Floating into mother ship’s wombs
    Landing in new feet again
    This is the future we had dreamt
    A utopia of science and emotion
    The religion of standing still
    And the blasphemy of angry will
    Sent this vessel first to extinguish
    Now to experience a wandering flight
    Into what was once considered night
    Now it’s seen as it unfolds
    To be a long story not yet told
    Our insignificant stance in the infinite dance
    Of matter and importance none
    The energetic transfer all to one
    In magnetics we find solitude
    Or disperse into a wash of atomic color
    I await this coming wave
    An invasion of the norm
    The mighty ships of pirates
    Arrive to free the earthly slaves.