On My Way to a Better Place

Waiting on the platform

for the train
down to the city
a cross-section
presents itself:
the shiftless in
sneakers with holes,
unshaven and unkept
the business woman
in skirt suit with her secrets
the balding onlooker
who tries to hide his growing
beer belly and forgets who
he was ten years earlier
the New York Post
unread on a metal grated bench
cold and impersonal.

No one talks on the platform
like an extended elevator ride
but some of us are comfortable
enough to scratch our asses
in front of perfect and imperfect
strangers. I’m not sure who is
better off.

11/3/10