Newark Airport

Here at the baggage claim,

I am a traveler without a world.

Where are my friends?

Does no one love me? (Am I alone?)

Or, am I lost at a crossroads

and only my map shows this destination?

I walk frantically from information booth

to pay telephone.

Who is going my direction?

Who can help me balance

three brown suitcases and a typewriter?

Has New Jersey died?

Up and down America

the radio babbles how Newark was lost,

slipped into a rift of time

and is gone forever.

The curious come to the edges of the earth,

gawking at the chasm,

where the dirty waters lap into the void.

Who is going my way?

Who will be my friend?

Hail a taxi?

Search for my lost hat?

I am stranded on a technological isle

while an omniscient voice prophesies,

"Piedmont Airlines, paging Satan.

Meet your party at the ticket counter."

A bus rumbles by.

I see a horned-figure

driving twenty five souls to hell

on the group plan.

The voice rings out again:

"All passengers, buses to heaven on the right.

Please have your tickets ready."

I rush to the ticket counter,

last dollars clutched in my hand.

The attendant laughs,

not Heaven,

the bus to Hoboken.

I sit disconsolately on a white, plastic chair

in an uncharged land

where strange tribes abound:

ravenous porters, headhunting chauffeurs,

wild-eyed cocktail lounge bartenders.

As hour comes, an hour goes.

I am alone.

Who will be my friend?

I ignore the continuing loudspeaker

I will be alone and unafraid;

not quailing at the squawking baggage belt

or startled by the voices

like dying animals

whose tortured cries

test my resolve.

The alarms are not for me.

I am here.

This is where I am going.