Route Seventy-three; 'Meet me at da Dunkins'

there's this couple
who ride my bus
they look like
they're serious pillheads
opiates and benzos
they are probably
much older then they look
but they've been together
a long time
you can tell
because they
look so much alike
they have the same expression
all the time
their faces are
deeply creased and
chaotic dashed lines
mar everywhere else
the skin looks like
it is about to slide
off their skulls
their eyelids hang
like thick heavy awnings
i've never seen
their eyes open
just squinting enough
to scratch tickets
or screw with an old phone
their mouths share
the same grim frown
i've never seen
if they have teeth but
they have too much cheek
it hangs loose on the sides
while their neck skin
is shrinkwrapped
under their jaws
they have the same
nasal raspy whine
but his is a tone
or two lower
they always wear shapeless
boston sports fan
activewear
and faded baggy unisex jeans
their slouching posture
makes their bodies look like
they are about to
slide off their Selves
so much do they look alike
they both wear a lot of
cheap yellow gold
he has big ink blots for tattoos
the high-dollar tickets
they scratch
have odds of 1 : 8.33
for even money
[i looked it up]
they mumble to themselves
or each other
while they scratch them
their phone conversations
are insane
like today it was only her
i sat two seats away
she fiddled with an
old junk phone
it rang and she answered it
hello
hello
hello
hello
each time her tone was
more confused and irritated
a question to the void
i wondered how it
would be to
live like that
two stops before
the train station
she made a call
every thing she said
was a loud confused question
lynn
hello
lynn
i'm almost dere
where d'ya
where d'ya wanna ta meet me
i'm on da bus
almost ta hahvahd
da seventie-tree
at da station
what
what
yur goin in an out
yur goin
i'm almost at da tunnel
where
where
mmm
ah
da dunkins
da dunkins
mmm
by da trains
da dunkins by da trains
downstayahs
okay
i'll be dere
da dunkins by da trains
a few min
i'm going down da tunnel now
i'll be right dere
yeh
bye
yeh
oink-ok
bye
when i got off the bus
i had to get away from her
as fast as i could
while waiting to pay my fare
in the station by the trains
i looked over at the dunkins
lynn was there
dirty blond hair
pulled back
in a tight ponytail
with matching grey
baggy sweatpants and shirt
and immaculate white sneakers

A Zipped–up Grace in Transit

I was on the Orange Line, riding into town from Malden Center, trying to straighten out my thoughts. I had a speaking engagement that I was going to and was trying to turn the meandering, convoluted mess my head was in into some sort of structure to speak, hoping to deliver a message that was coherent, if not extemporaneous.

My afternoon had not gone well. It was the Sunday of the Columbus Day weekend, where, as I had written in a poem years before, there was a "rich October burn: When the sun plays across the face like a lover's smile upon parting." It was that rare last weekend of flush.

Despite such sentiment, I was dealing with a different parting, and focused as such, was overlooking a fortuitous joining. Per usual. I had just shown the apartment I was to take over to a future roommate. I was moving back to it in East Watertown, but my wife was moving out to leave the state.

"So, do you think she's really going to move out?" he asked.

I looked around. Half the apartment was boxed up. The rest was staged for packing. "Looks like it."

He thought the room was small, and I knocked twenty bucks off the rent. He didn't have a job. I was desperate to get out of Malden. No way I could afford the place, even at half the rent. I wanted my books. I wanted my technology stuff, my zines, my comic books. I wanted Missy Loo to sleep on my chest, snoring and purring. Anything to get me out of Malden.

He took the room. I rode the bus back to Harvard Square. I was speaking later that night, just around the corner from the apartment. I had a couple of hours to kill. I was going to hang-out, learn some HTML, write or something. I didn't even have money for one cup of coffee, but was hoping I could jump on someplace's signal. At Harvard I discovered everyone had similar ideas; it was packed, and after my experience at the apartment I felt vulnerable. I went back to Malden.

It took quite awhile to get there, and once in my room, I dropped my bag on the floor with hesitation, latently worried about bed bugs. But relieved that the bug that was my current roommate was gone, I stretched out on the only piece of furniture I could trust, because I had been dutifully spraying the mattress down with 91% alcohol to kill the bugs and eggs, and liberally applying talcum powder to it afterwards— cuts the bastards that survive to ribbons.

I don't know where I drifted to; I didn't doze or really dream. I guess I went back to SF, down in the Christmas Tree Warehouse; laying alone in bed, shivering, drunk, visions of Yankee Pot Roast, and Oven Broiled Chicken, Suckling Pig (with the apple in its mouth) drifting by overhead like in an old Merrie Melodies cartoon. The room came into focus again, I was surprised how much time had past, but it still wasn't enough. I got ready to go back to Watertown.

So, back on the T, rolling out of Wellington Square, I noticed this young woman in a hijab sitting three seats to my right. She had a small leather-bound Koran in here lap that could be zipped shut. But it was open in her lap, and her lips were moving, forming the words, but making no sound. I watched her mouth, curious. She was very attractive, and I had been in a phase of admiring how a well-chosen stylish hijab could frame a lovely, exotic face in a way that the hooded sweatshirts of her New England peers couldn't.

Somewhere around Sully Square, her head raises to look out the window across the car from us, and her lips are still moving. She's praying, I thought, not that unusual as I had been making my petitions on the train lately too, except it was my little "screw you" to everyone else who had their noses in their phones. I had begun to worry if that diminished the intent of my humble requests for an intersession.

But when the Orange Line travels between Sully and Bunker Hill Community College, there is this long stretch where passengers seated as the woman and I were, can see out across East Cambridge and the Boston side of the Charles River. In the evening hours the sun, as it sets, takes up a good portion of this space, and this balmy October evening it was taking a long rest like it was trying to catch its breath. It hung there in some fiery hue between crimson and a harvest orange.

I snuck a quick look at the girl, she was growing on me. She was still praying as the light filled the car. I was shocked to find that a corona the same color as the sun had encircled her face. Little tongues of flame licked about her cheekbones and jawline. It seemed she was transformed into a beautiful saint with all the ecstasy of the longing of Rumi.

Now I am sure there was a practical reason for this "illusion", based on the angles of refraction between the observer, subject, and light-source. I'm sure the glass had something to do with it. I thought about rainbows; sure you needed to be in the right spot, the antisolar point, and the bow appears at an angle of  ≈ 41° off the line that connects the head of the observer to their head's shadow...and so on. But the reality is that that rainbow that you see, is yours and yours only; it only exists because you are there to observe it. Even the guy standing next to you, he may see a rainbow, but it's not yours. Rainbows only exist if there is an observer, or its surrogate like a camera, to witness them.

And so it was here, I had come a long way already. The Presence of the Mystery. This was affirmed to me by this beautiful woman, who for a few brief moments on a October weekend was in grace— the belief that despite all worldly appearances, the universe makes sense, and reality is on your side. And if reality isn't on your side, you have made this choice. Reality does not choose sides, people do. Get yourself on reality's side, and be in its perfect alignment. I was present to recognize it, to bear witness to it, and to partake in her state of grace. This was evidenced by the fact the kid sitting next to me on my left had gone on the nod, in the middle of a text message.