Please Stand Away from the Platform's Edge (this piece will keep growing)
I wrote this the other day
and I thought to myself
that a poem is a writers day
and a novel his life.
But what if I write a poem
all the time?
From the same head
in the same place
from the same routine.
Of what monument
will this ever growing poem read?
What type of world
will these words paint?
So that is what I’ll do.
Write of an entire lifetime
in one cohesive voice
and one big ass poem…
I’m writing these words
on the subway.
From the very back of the car,
against the two doors that join them.
I’m writing
from the bowels of a tin coffin.
Herded along with everyone
going nowhere.
It is the place where my everyday begins
and every one ends.
Of what sadness
these pages will sing.
From such a hell
this story is born.
These words
will be hurried along,
lined up
and stuffed in.
Just like the hand that wields the pen.
This will not be my story.
It will be the one forced upon me
by circumstance and fate.
What a demoralizing opening
and what a defeated end
these confines will take us.
I remember when I first got here.
When I first started on this journey.
It was all very exciting.
There was so much track laid ahead.
Even on the grey, rainy days
it was magic.
I would watch the drops race each other across the pane
and behind them lied the reflection
of a young and hopeful man
with eyes toward the future.
Today
is another grey and rainy day
after decades of grey rainy days,
but today does not feel like magic.
Today feels wet and cold.
Today
I can feel the weight
of every drop I carry.
Today
my eyes are on a different race
and there’s a smell of death in the air.
On other days
riding the rail to nowhere
breaks me quietly.
It whispers a death sentence
in my ear.
Stop after stop.
On those days
it’s me that’s losing
and I’m just not fitting in.
I fidget and shrink even smaller
then I already am
but I’m still in the way.
It’s times like this
that I know
like everyday
this day
is not my day.
That today
I’ve been beaten
my spirit strangled
by a man with less of a heart
telling me
mine
is not beating fast enough.
It’s days like this
and those that follow
that tell me
I’m on the wrong track
tracing the wrong line
down the wrong path
and incapable
of turning it around.
But forward always goes back
and that is all the change
I seek.
Just a reprieve from the now
just a breath
of freedom.
It is not a new course
just a day off
from the one I’m on.
But even those
ride heavy on the rail.
For though there are
fewer faces
with more dignity
there is
a somber inevitability
in the air.
There is a pit in my stomach
that promises to sprout
a tomorrow.
And though you might
pluck it from view
its roots run deep
choking out a flower’s hope
and thriving in the depths
of perennial monotony.
If only I stood
a few inches closer to heaven
I would think it possible.
But tomorrow
the bell will sound
too early
too late
and just in time
for me
to watch the train pull away.
Like my chances
my dreams
my love.
It will move on
and carry the rest of the world with it.
Leaving just me
on the platform.
Like the day
and the night
and the ones before that.
With only 6 minutes to go.
vaporwave
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
gummygunk
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
janainaart