Lion’s Gate, August 12, 2016

What does poetry sound like these days?

I thought it was for the young

I thought it was for the idealists

What would this poem even look like? How would it feel, the crushing weight

Of our

Joyless

Selves

Everything is made in our image.

Is it even interesting?

Everything has been done and history is over.

Has time stood still

Preserved in a bottle of rum? 

 

The train inches forward.

The man next to me smells incredible.

This could be a moment.

We would remove our headphones and embrace

He smells so good.

 

The word on the monitor is mixed up. The letters dance around each other to spell vitriolic.

 

I will tell him

I will be reborn

We will fall in love and have a story.

 

I strain to read my horoscope.

They probably recycle the same prediction through each sign

Randomly so you would never know

Who would really put astrological insight into the PATH train horoscope?

Someone holding onto their dreams

Someone who wants to believe.

 

I’m going to tell this man. We get to Exchange Place, he is still sitting.

I make my move 

I am trying to live in the moment.

I tell him, You smell fantastic. What is that called. He is smiling. His shirt fits perfectly over his muscles which are perfect and not obnoxious.

He is pleasant. The scent is Creed.

We do not move forward. The train inches forward.

I am right back where I started.

 

What does poetry sound like now?

What does it even look like?

A job application.

A lethal one night stand.

An empty parking lot.

Empty words.

I walk down Grand Street to the empty Pathmark.

The building defined now by what is missing.

I was looking for the Lion’s Gate and screamed my dreams into the sky as the blue faded to black,

In front of the Advance Auto Parts

The windows in the distance lit up like a sneer.

I turned my back, forgiving everything, remembering the sound of poetry.