Two of the scariest things I’ve ever seen
were the eye bags on a business man
who sat across from me on the train
from Deer Park to Penn Station.
See, those New York trains are so frightening.
But if you look long enough at the faces
of the commuters forced to ride them every day,
you’ll have nightmares for all eternity.
That’s also why, for nearly a year,
I stopped looking in the mirror.
Garbage Notes:
When I worked at the tech company that shall not be named, I was forced to commute from Deer Park to Penn Station by train every day, which was kind of devastating. I was still working on my PhD, so my apartment was all the way out by Stony Brook, and I was a broke grad student back then, so I didn’t have enough money to move into a new place yet—especially not in Manhattan. So, I commuted by trains and subways for like nearly three hours a day for months. And it was excruciating—exhausting. But I was still very young. As hard as it was, my body could handle it. But each time, I’d see other people doing it too—people of all ages, day in and day out, looking like zombies, weary as hell. And they’d sit in the same seat on the train every day. They’d make the exact same movements every time. Everyone avoiding eye contact. And they’d have that same dead-eyed look on their faces. The look of absolute soul-death. Sure, maybe there was a nobility to it. The fact that they were all so committed to such drudgery. Perhaps they had families to support. Loved ones depending on them. Etc, etc. But I still think of this one guy who had the biggest, most deeply set eye bags I’d ever seen in my life. So deep you could store coins in them. And he looked so tired—awfully, existentially, deathly, tired. And I remember just thinking to myself: god, is that going to be me?
Franco Amati 2023
All aboard. Hop on the train to Hell. Don’t forget your bags!
ahhhh.....
.... it's a tough world (sometimes).
Thank you for your poetry Franco.