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.
travel
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.