i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know

foucault on the 2/3 train
man crying, man crying out
swaying his head from side to side,
swaying his torso up and down,
moaning moaning moaning.
punctuated by cordial greetings and thanks.
"hey brother!"
he calls to the black man across the bench.
"hey brother!"
there is a giant deadness around him
a giant dead space of emptiness on the bench
a giant dead space of silence on the train
he is the only thing alive.
he is the only thing that "merely is."
"thank you!" he yells to someone. "thank you!" he yells,
i wonder why, and what it was for.
once a hobo thanked me on the J train,
thanked me for smiling at him. he always tells me
i have beautiful eyes each time he sees me,
but this time he thanked me for smiling.
(not cringing, presumably.)

the man is still moaning in agony,
hands clasped around his face. some ignore him easily.
others search around for
the eyes of the other passengers to
silently speak. like the old lady across from me,
she is upset. she wants to look me in the eye with a look that says,
"how terrible. how terrible that someone should be like that.
take him away, take him away. we are not like that - but we could be, i suppose,
so take him away! take him away!"

i half smile in return. i have, of course, been pursuing my own thoughts.
i am in anguish. i don't know what to do, what to say.
even how to be. my own fear clouds me. i am upset.

a cute boy i notice each day
has sat down beside me. i
wonder if he knows it is me he is
sitting by. i have caught him looking at me a few times,
but never very seriously. we are close. the train lurches.
i press my arm into his. we are touching. i begin to pretend that he is mine.
he has "a people's history of the world" on his lap;
foucault, of course, is on mine. our arms still pressed together, i wonder what he is thinking.
nothing, presumably. his eyes are closed.
a part of me opens, quietly, deep inside,
opens for business, ripens for the taking. full of yearning,
i focus on our touching arms.

i do not really want him;
not sure if i really want anybody but
i want to be wanted and
want to feel want. (there is one
that i perhaps feel real want for, but
too little, too late, the die has been cast, the poison drank. like socrates, i suppose, i will not turn away from
my fate.)

i don't think he is noticing man in anguish. i am sure he isn't
noticing me. i had thought a moment before about foucault,
thought about young michel, much like me
wanting to want anything but void,
loneliness, anguish,
i think of him, young, serious, like me,
tearing up at the man's anguish,
tearing at it's truth, jealous.
i begin to feel better. i begin to feel for the man,
really, i begin to sense him as a real being then,
not just an object that causes me distress. my guilt
disappears in my flickering jealousy, my serious empathy.

i too long to scream out and wail,
i wish to thank those around me, call out to them
in distress, i curse
the invisible walls between these two touching arms,
and the nothing that they signify. how can two touching arms never
mean anything at all? should it not signify something,
however slight, when two beings are touching, when
one hears the cry of someone in anguish? i see young michel
on the bench beside the man (funny, he's bald, can't picture him any other way)
and then he says to me,
"i understand, (x). i understand you."

this meaning means something, not that
this one and not that, this person's cry is important and
this one's is not. shut yourself off to that voice, that touch, but
turn yourself on for...what?

i get off at 14th street
and hop on the L. i play with my hair in the reflection on the window.
i toy with a few strands of my messy bangs, laughing to myself about what
men must think of a woman doing her hair in
'the messy look' because to them it looks so careless, so free
and yet i am obsessing over what amounts to several strands because
they must go this way and not that, i simply feel
that they must go this way and not that. these strands here, not those and not those,
only these, these matter and they must go this way. how? why?

*****

there is no excuse for your reluctance. to know your own heart but not to speak it, not to act on it? this is sin. this is despicable. now, what to say to mine? to my heart?
"i know i know i know i know i know i know i know...."