“Current”
How many millions before me
have ridden this train on their way in
on this steel city vein?
Still, I feel none can ignore me
for even if I go under, subsumed in the bloody flow before I done
leaked my peace, I believe my remains will
be exhumed to show
what soft-speaking scars I’ve garnered
thus far along the rough and rowdy ride,
shimmering skin that lightly hints at my inner steel glinting that
steadied my stomach to abide this
that is
current.
“That metal matter,” they will say, “held his fear at bay while
he tried to smile and play with what he had to display.”
Or, even if
someone derides then hides what’s left of me beneath the surface,
the world won’t be bereft of me
because down in the mishmash motley of undercurrent
I’ll dissolve and dispatch into the swirl and swish
of wheelindeals and social spiels
fragments of my feelfully foolish substance
which will imbue this concoction,
scattered to prevent hijacking distraction
and ensure subconscious adoption;
unfulfilled substrata of intentions, to those opposed,
may seem fleeting when I’m no longer on top to give their sleepless seething repose
but no, they will find others to compose their renown
for once they fall, floating through the flow,
from my sad kind of conscious control to the ground,
only then will they lubricate with their slick hope and expedite with their quick calm
the path of those who heed the same call to arms.
So for now, let this vessel carry me on
I will play my part in this far-flung, scarring, scary rhythm
driven by a steel heart that daily feels the come and the go, that frailly heals
the wounds caused by the showy millions scrambling
in and out on the polluting shouting seething of the commuter flow
and that breathes like an iron lung for a comatose millennium.
How many billions before me
have ridden this train on their way in
on this steel city vein?
Still, I feel none can ignore me
for even if I go under, subsumed in the bloody flow before I done
leaked my peace, I believe my remains will
be exhumed to show
what soft-speaking scars I’ve garnered
thus far along the rough and rowdy ride,
shimmering skin that lightly hints at my inner steel glinting that
steadied my stomach to abide
this that is current.
