O ***** king.

*****, O ***** king,
what bitter thing is this?
what shaft, tearing my heart?
what scar, what light, what fire
searing my eye-***** and my eyes with flame?
nameless, O spoken name,
king, lord, speak blameless *****.

Why do you blind my eyes?
why do you dart and pulse
till all the dark is home,
then find my soul
and ruthless draw it back?
scaling the scaleless,
opening the dark?
speak, nameless, power and might;
when will you leave me quite?
when will you break my wings
or leave them utterly free
to scale heaven endlessly?

A bitter, broken thing,
my heart, O ***** lord,
yet neither drought nor sword
baffles men quite,
why must they feign to fear
my ****** glance?
feigned utterly or real
why do they shrink?
my trance frightens them,
breaks the dance,
empties the market-place;
if I but pass they fall
back, frantically;
must always people mock?
unless they shrink and reel
as in the temple
at your uttered will.

O ***** king,
lord, greatest, power, might,
look for my face is dark,
burnt with your light,
your fire, O ***** lord;
is there none left
can equal me
in ecstasy, desire?
is there none left
can bear with me
the kiss of your white fire?
is there not one,
Phrygian or frenzied Greek,
poet, song-swept, or bard,
one meet to take from me
this bitter power of song,
one fit to speak, *****,
your praises, lord?

May I not wed
as you have wed?
may it not break, beauty,
from out my hands, my head, my feet?
may Love not lie beside me
till his heat
burn me to ash?
may he not comfort me, then,
spent of all that fire and heat,
still, ashen-white and cool
as the wet laurels,
white, before your feet
step on the mountain-*****,
before your fiery hand
lift up the mantle
covering flower and land,
as a man lifts,
O *****, from his bride,
(cowering with woman eyes,) the veil?
O ***** lord, be kind.

All the train cars are color coded
neat, orderly, organized, thought out and boring.
The lives of the cars lack excitement, carting ungrateful
impatient people around all day is just no fun.

The Color Coded Train Cars disengage from their
tracks, its time to do something. This is when
the Green line learns that it is not designed
for platforms, it can't see over the edge
and its stairs start much too low. The Red line
loves that nobody can board at Brookline Village,
Chestnut Hill and all the rest. The people just can't reach,
and the Blue line never makes it to Wonderland.

The City is confused, the City is frightened,
the City is Late. The City scolds the Color Coded
Train Cars for their mischief, and the cars themselves
are left unfulfilled.

Sometimes I feel as though time has stopped moving
I know that it never really stops
That time moves as regularly as it can
But
Moments linger
They lag and rip and jostle
Stretch out like taffy in a candy stores window on a boardwalk
They have a tendency to stick around long past the expiration date
I know
Somewhere in the factual portion of my brain
That each second is uniform
One sixtieth of a minute and one thirty-six hundredth of an hour
Exact concrete absolute
Measured just the same
As if I can’t lose everything
In that same second
That was
At one time or another
As uniform and bland as all the others.