Just A Look On A Subway Platform Poem by Thoughts of a Single Man

In the casual midst of my early day commute she found me

never dreaming the the roots of our purging existence

could become so expertly intertwined,

the non gratified body, non ratified soul, and unsatisfied mind.

All in the wink of the looming eye of tumbling time.

She could tell my entire history with a single glance

and in her eyes I saw the reflections of all that I had become

In that one moment so pure

I watched the story of us unfold

like dying flowers released on the wind.

We walked the same path of pain and madness

two nameless strangers engaged in a dance

of an unrequested sacrifice.

Silently we watched each other

as the pages of our lives whipped by in a frenzied pace.

We spoke no words, for there was nothing to be said,

as the images of our departure

twirled in the shadows of our advances

like a reel of forgotten cinemas still playing in our heads.

The bubble of the broken floated free on the waves of our angst

as the roses procured in the fields of whimsy

merely gave way to the prints of our bloody palms

still aching from the content of their thorns.

The sun became a ball of shimming ice above us

that hung unmolested in the frozen sky

as the wings of the searching butterfly fell from the tepid air

and lost its flight before it laid flat

tattooed on the shoulder of the reaper so grim.

We were the dark swans

that shared and swam the murky waters

and stole kisses from each other

in a futile attempt to snatch a smile from our lips.

The harmony of a sorrow played so quietly

as our waiting fingers impatiently tapped a message

in the Morse code of a cry for endless help.

So brief was the bond between us

that I knew that we would be linked to each other forever more.

Two ships drowning in the oceans of the unknown

yet still so very close to beckoning shore.

I was her pendulum

swinging back and forth, too and fro before her,

from the extremes of death and life

and she was my monitor, my gauge, my salvation,

the hand that reached for me before I could fall

knowing all along it did not possess the strength

to pull me from the flames of my torment.

We were so inherently different yet so very much the same.

I wondered to myself if she knew me as her eyes looked through me

as I peered down the corridors of her soul

as we stood there together on that cold summers day.

And then the train came roaring in and the band marched on

as we were swept away and torn apart from each other

lost in the mass of another morning parade.

Thoughts of a Single Man © 2014 tm