My Lady of the E Train

Here, between the posters

shouting education for the blind

and Jack Daniels whiskey

you are a huddled winter's coat,

eyes trapped between a black ski cap

and bright red scarf

like a Moorish maiden

who would dart away in a crowded market.

We do not dart here:

stacked like cartons of detergent bottles.

Your eyes avoid mine;

how do you know,

I am not child molester

or stock broker?

In my pinstripe blue,

I am like the others,

man, filled with gasping breath

and desire..

You wish to be known

as artist, friend

not simply by

the body's quick panic.

I have the indifferent leer

of a million others

who would caress your face

and pass on unknowing.

Guilty.

I have lusted;

I have sought less

than your truest self.

Yet, beneath all this is the certainty

that the chance meeting of our eyes

can produce miracles.

Thoughts While Waiting in a Gasoline Line

Curse Mr. Ford's four-wheeled contraption.

I drive it;

then it drives me

to the gasoline station

to the gasoline station

and...

to the gasoline station.

It drives me also to the repair shop

to the muffler shop, to the transmission shop,

where I am in the hands of the repairmen,

angry gods, who dazzle me with blazing repair bills

and the destruction of starters, manifolds,

carburetors, great whatyouraters and small thingalators;

things with powerful names and expensive parts

which will not let me drive again.

And I must sign the authorized bill

on the authorized dotted line

and pay with the properly authorized, no-bounce check

or cash only, because the shop does not take checks

or I will be in eternal plastic debt,

which I still am, for I will drive again

to be driven again

to the gasoline station.

There, many men, like me, are waiting

in vehicles, like mine,

and they are drive again to lines

which are like the lines today

and we will curse Mr. Ford and Mr. Chrysler

and Mr. Plymouth and their four-wheeled contraptions

another day.