Things I wish I didn't have to write about.

I'm on the 12:05 to Penn Station and the woman sitting next to me keeps clearing her throat. I'm jealous.

I wish there was a way to eradicate the mucus that accumulates in my head. I want freedom from the mindsludge resultant of 19 long years of exposure to daytime television and thinly veiled motives that I choose to ignore. They call it 'angel dust'.

Now the narcotics fairy- gaunt and sallow, with her wax paper wings and needle wand, has sprinkled her soul possessing dust on the noses of a few that I love, shrinking pupils and fogging realities, snatching from throats the lump of humane empathy and in them lodging crazed and insatiable want. 

I long for a mystical godmother of my own, blessed destroyer of the nihilistic tendencies that now pervade, to take and wrap me in her soft cloak of blue calico. She would be timely and majestic, summoned at the second that a sigh of resignation leaves my chest or a twitch of fear takes to my jaw. In her beautiful violet eyes would be the shine of immediate recognition and understanding. As she appeared she would step surely with her golden boots towards the lurking enemy,shaking her beautiful head with pity and menace. She would slowly stretch an intimidating arm toward the hovering fiend..

God, this lady is still at it. 

Her name is probably Ellen. She sports high waisted slacks and a crew cut. Her glasses frames and a facial expression suggest with little doubt that she has the radio of her forest green saab dead set to the classical music station, and complains in each and every one of the town board meetings where she is famous for her spite and religious attendance. The obnoxious noises of this 50 something trying in vain to de-slime her vocal chords become to me the glorious grunts of exertion during the battle between the junk fairy and my super-powered sobriety advocate..

My godmother would fight with the brutality of honesty, screaming the loud and painful truths I can't. She would show the dope fairy no mercy, and snap the evil wand in two and shred the paper wings. A twelve step program encompassed in the wrath of a disney character. Nine feet tall would she stand with constant gleaming composure, like the moon's liquid glow. My godmother would stare eye to eye with the struggling drug fairy, with calm strong fingers clenched around the barely pulsing neck. She would hold and choke with an unrelenting grip, her power would derive from the grief of the witnesses of all addiction. As the sleet begins to fall, cleansing and silver, she would release her benevolent grasp. With her golden boots she would stomp on the withered and lifeless countenance as I weep and smile..

And the woman is still clearing her throat. I want to tell her that her halls menthol lozenges aren't working, instead I look out the window and bite my nails, contemplating the approach of the Tappan Zee Bridge. 

I just want everyone to be ok. 

Kitschy Ice Cream Treats vs. Unwanted Backpacks; the good outweighs the bad.

I hate the impossible satchel called a conscience-

the unmistakable tin of the things we fabricate to avoid its burden

I love the unnatural ease of living at 4a.m, the sound of the highway trucks-

how they always evoke for some reason the pure stream of nostalgia that I curse/cherish

I hate the pale reluctance of the morning after-

sweet cloudy oblivion wrecked by the cruel alarm, and the unholy pitch of its death beep

I love you and the contradictory-

how the strength of your fingers makes manifest the softness of your brown eyes

I hate simultaneously the fears of certainty/the unknown-

the choice between the resignation of doom or the paranoia of confusion

I love the hot chemical smell of tar in the summer-

how it reminds me of walking that block, albany, childhood, push up pops, and the wild beauty of life

Escapism on the Q.

It's so easy for me to believe that you are that one simple, shining solution. The flashlight in the room when the power's out, illuminating all of my inadequacies with blinding precision and then burning them away, if just for a while. 

I'm on a train. 

I'm a mole, because underground is where I feel most myself, I crave the anonymity, I so dig being a reflection on a window and a stolen glance. A pair of boots and nothing else.  

Maybe I'm just subversive. Maybe I'm just sub-everything. Always less and lacking.

(I wonder if I could crawl the gross span of these depths, deep and directly under all those little asian foods stores with their pallor and supernatural quality. Bars and churches. Vodka and holy water. I'm sure my eyes would adjust to the darkness as I scaled the rotting tracks of the Q. A girl phantom, content in my search of confusion. I would live off donations of pretzels and orangina from kindly vendors of vague middle eastern origin. Every little while I would lift my tired neck upwards, and peer with always thinning hope through the slats that allow bits of dusty light and the odor of burning meat to seep down, and the hellish steam to rise up to the street like a repressed memory or an unwanted thought. Looking up I would no doubt see the frantic platform gait of a scared prostitute on 7th avenue. Or the tired limp of a shoeless bum on 43rd street. I would be glad for my safety)

This place so bereft of joy is for me a mine of creative thought. 

I can see the ghosts of the trillions who have sat in the plastic seats across from me, their spirits are infinite in the sickly reflections of florescence. 

It's transportation, it's magic.

Sometimes I get lost in the beauty of the graffiti, I try in vain to make sense of the window scratches. When we halt between stops, I hold my own breath until the train starts breathing again, and I know we'll move soon. 

If I let go, I'm positive that we'll all explode. 

The voices of the conductors sound so tired, calloused with  years of experience. The crackle of their announcements brings me back to reality. 

And I always feel

I always have felt

That I'm on the cusp of the revelation of some secret, something of grand and extreme urgency.