This woman does the same thing every day.
Same breakfast, same lunch.
Her whole routine doesn’t vary.
Must be the weight of choice in a city so daunting…
The chaos out there is just way too much.
In that way I understand her.
I can sympathize.
When everything around you is in constant motion,
you create your own constants.
But I noticed this lady talks to herself too.
Full dialogs, lips moving, even gestures,
head movements, and expressions—
just no voice.
Mechanistic routine within her, insanity outside her.
The tension must have driven her mad.
Hard to stay sane when everything around you
is so fucking loud.
Garbage Notes:
This is one of maybe a dozen or so poems I wrote during a very stressful period in my life. It was after grad school when I was kind of miserable. I was in my late twenties working for a big tech company in New York City—this was before I gave myself over fully to being a writer (or whatever it is I am now).
I think it was the mechanization of city life in conjunction with the strict and severely patterned workday of the technology worker that frightened me. For the first time in my life I was away from the freewheeling, laid-back vibe of academia, and the whole thing was kind of a shock to my system to witness how regimented life was for most working people.