Of Art and Passengers (A Subway Tale)

A kaleidoscope of ethnicity
compressed

Flavors permeate the
nostrils through transmutational
remnants still wafting about the air

Diagonal, vertical,
slits form breaks
then
stops and
when ready
starts again
only. for these. pauses
to refresh newly formed

Every pang once felt
forgets its cause,
each pain you feel
salts away before the
peppered points of tear

after a gritty stairs descent
a newfound attachment
to ever-altering straits
of atmosphere appears,

is discovered, forgotten
and rediscovered once more

the comfort of warming
sensations resonate to
the gullet of an individual
existence

alone, this portrait of
warmth, is a cycle held
dear, for between both
hands, and through every
biting glance, a variance
of spice and pleasure
emanates within

passageways recall
those sacred memories
of long lost times and
even longer days,

where you're only care
was being clothed and dry,
swaddled full upon the
primitive satisfactions that
enrich each and every morsel
of woman and man

art forms in flashes, scrawled
upon supporting beams and
along the seams of darkened
apportioned tracts of tunneled
walls, where the only vision
beyond the flickering bulb that
sways to the trains fleeting feet

is that of the composer and the
architect, as withered fingers
paint away by these unnamed
scribes of the underground

and in these too fast to recall
moments of rapture,
both the observers, poised from
their catbird seat, to the artist,
swimming faster
than retinae can scan,
both arrive at such a place
where a new artistic movement
is revealed within

at each the platforms,
the faces alter form
and air expands, contracts,
from thick to thin,
from thin to thick

In the winter months
you may not care about
the close comforts of
strangers, processing and
surveying your every inch,
feeling out your very story,
as surmised from the touching
warmth of an impossibly captured
palette of voluminous shapes and
shades of skin

In the summer the space
is prayed upon, for it's
eagerness to cool, but

occasionally, perhaps we don't
mind as much,

for coverings
are vaguer than they are
other points of the year,
and the depths
below the concrete jungle
are cool in their subterranean
melody

and then the change falls
clink-clink-clink

the cards are punched
reminders of the day of
month, sometimes year

but the transaction is far from done,
the conductor's voice replays, repeating
under the covers entering the dreams
you carry within

I never cared much for subways or
people for that matter.  I can't
say much has changed, but change
has occurred, this much I cannot deny

for once poetry caught me in it's net,
every experience and vision
seemed to come alive, each breathing
a song that only I can fully hear

and I never even discussed the conversations,
the ones that only I could hear,
the ones  jumbled together, the
passages of sound and speech,
I patch to form
the ever-changing conduction
of symphonic sound

I never speak of those dear words,
for those transactions, are as sacred as
the nap-sacks and gold studded black
suitcases, white-knuckle clutched close
to traveling hand

Head on over to D'Verse tonight and check out their weekly Poetics feature, where Claudia has offered up this Subway inspired prompt. Come read what others have linked up and while you're there, as always, link your subway poem to share.