Transit

The engine shudders under
the thunder of workmen feet,
tireless and stupid.

A machine: blue and gray and
Long on metal tracks, a blindfold
To dampen the solid white paste

Of noon sky. My right leg is
Shaking or it is shaking me, it is
Sending wave-pulses on my

Body. Four hours a day, twenty
In a week. My life in pause, in
Meditation, in wheels and glass and

Coins for card, in the whir of wires.
Guadalupe and Cubao, a horizon
Of neon signs that day I stood on

That gray soil smiling wide with
Alcohol poisoning.
I didn't care.

Legarda, university. My head burrowed
In jacket, spinning, paralyzed with
Choice, ambition, failure, taste.

The smoke, perfumed, dominant, familiar.
The noise, a song. The sweat,
The bodies, the dance, the chase,

Unrestrained. Taft and Buendia and Recto,
U.N., a life stitched from filmstrips
Of a girl with enormous black hair

Adrift in flight, awake, alive, right
Leg shaking, waiting for the
Next stop.