All Good Conductors

I. O the screech and heat and hate we have for each day's commute, the long wait at the last stop before we go screaming underground, while the pigeons court and shit and rut insolently on the tracks because this train is always late, always aimed at only us, who when it comes with its blunt snout, its thousand mouths, cram and curse and contort into one creature, all claws and eyes, tunneling, tunneling, tunneling toward money. 2. Sometimes a beauty cools through the doors at Grand, glides all the untouchable angles and planes of herself to stand among us like a little skyscraper, so sheer, so spare, gazes going all over her in a craving wincing way like sun on glass. 3. There is a dreamer all good conductors know to look for when the last stop is made and the train is ticking cool, some lover, loner, or fool who has lived so hard he jerks awake in the graveyard, where he sees coming down the aisle a beam of light whose end he is, and what he thinks are chains becoming keys.