I stand alone in the dark Fulton Street subway station,
Breathing in the *****-scented air,
Breathing out clouds of steam,
A subway train rushes along,
Not stopping,
Biting at my eardrums,
With the painful percussion,
Of thousands of people,
Silently screaming,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
The air fanned by each subway car,
Rushes against me,
Pushes the ozone and the smell of burnt brake linings,
Into my nostrils,
Along with the air,
****** through the iron gratings,
Along miles of Brooklyn sidewalks,
Carrying the odor of a *******’s festering sores,
And the cries of a hungry, fatherless child in ***** diapers,
And the hoarse moaning of a city councilman mentoring a young intern,
And the cheap perfume of a fourteen year-old runaway,
Turning $20 tricks in an alley,
Smelling of stale Chinese food and wet dogs,
And . . .
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
. . . the smell of spoiled cabbage soup,
And the rancid remains of a hotdog buried in sauerkraut,
And putrid lilies lying in a gutter,
All assaulting me, forcing me backwards,
Until my back presses against,
The grimy once-white tiles,
That coldly burn their graffiti on my spine:
God is dead,
Bake a ****,
Whitey *****,
**** the *******,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
The train finally passes,
Its red eyes receding into the dank,
Dark tunnel beyond the platform,
The screeches and screams slowly die out,
Their echoes ******* behind them,
The smell,
Of my,
Warm
*****.
From: Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems
You can hear all six of my Unsung Heroes poems read by me in my podcasts at https://open.spotify.com/show/1zgnkuAIVJaQ0Gb6pOfQOH. (plus much more of my fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English and Spanish)
