Morning Train: A poem 

The bathroom clime evaporates in the hue 

Of dull black faces cresting on the sooty line 

I awe at watching an angel take shape 

In the mall, as I pass, walking past row faces 

A cubist henchman and a student, a leper 

A walking stick, cold hands at the ticket counter 

Pale words along the serpentine queue 

The final screech as a car brakes. 

I want the street to become livewire 

Like pictures flashing on a cream-white screen 

The edge of something inevitable 

A sharp knife drawing blood on the last cubicle 

Some ignition; the spark of genius, a fairy’s wand. 

In the folded news, the truncated passages read aloud 

On the megaphone, a healthy good day 

The plumber in the latrine is the bastion of existence 

It chugs at us as if by some diurnal joke 

I vacillate among the thousand faces 

To become one amidst the morning 

On that exasperating train