Decaying on Route Number Four
You catch the bus on Cleland Drive and sit
perfectly still, hoping no one notices
your nervous tic. Your umber eyes passing
over old-man Al and wondering huh,
is that what they see? Because you do too.
You can see yourself in Janette Harker,
with her loud shouting and heroin veins.
With the raggedy grey in her hair and
how she presses STOP on the drug-run
Martin Street block past the Subway. How did
It come to this? Are you like them?
Why are those obnoxious high school kids' hushed
voices and jabbed "freaks" directed at you?
You see yourself in the midday alley
passengers who look like they haven't had
anything to eat today and they rock
like a fetus back and forth, miasma
on their breath. It smells like alcohol and... not
quite death, more that their life has ended.
No vigor in those backlit, sleepless eyes.
You tug the pulley and in neatest,
most orderly fashion, you exit, all
while hoping that they don't see in you
what you see in Al and Janette. That they
don't think your life has ended and that you
are just miasma death, quivering corpse.
YOU ARE READING
Heuristic
PoetryA poetry collection. heu·ris·tic /hyo͞oˈristik/ adjective enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves. "a "hands-on" or interactive heuristic approach to learning" noun a heuristic process or method.
