Monday, November 11, 2024

The New York City Subway System

Commuters with black tobacco lung
descend and rise in curious resurrection
to cold gray canyons only to die again.

They live in subterranean trails

carved from the deadest of rock

for the sake of electric shimmers

from silver bullet wails.

 

Standing,

the logos from Bethlehem

swings from a loopy strap,

unaware that he has been reborn

into the lap of downstream time.

 

He wears a worn hat

and baggy brown suit.

Sheep, riding and rocking

through switchover blackouts,

careen through invisible salvation

while scrolling a phone

or reading The New York Times.

 

This is a land of beggars, lepers,

the crippled and the blind

who wish to vacate the grave.

Connected by dramatis personae,

they march as a single outcast

onto the deep turnstile platform

which is their stage of seven stages.

Together, they are an incarnation

wanting only the opportunity to save.

 

This, therefore, is the universe.

This, the arrow of space and time

caught in orbital ellipse.

This, the marriage of the lamb

taken in holy howling vows

for better or for worse,

on hold until the future age

springs open a billion years

from now.


~William Hammett



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