So I turned 32 today.
Penniless birthday,
almost.

Howling rains
woke me up
and I fell back asleep.
And the cat respected my
birthday.
Did not claw my lips like
my usual feline alarm.

The birthday flowers
in the morning
were vivid.
My mother bought them,
deep red and
deep yellow.

I requested
for birthday lunch
my mother’s
home-cooked burgers
and fries sprinkled with
iodized salt.
And I filled myself up
with them hot and crispy
fries
and didn’t care if they
stayed inside my guts
until 2014.

I never really liked cake.
Opted for a dozen original glazed.
Heavenly donuts.
Two of them tumbled down
the escalators.
The first birthday flaw.
Like a bleep in the
grand scheme of
birthday things.

I brought them to a Greek
restaurant.
My mom and dad
and two sisters.
Not really hungry.
Just hungry
for a different taste.

The salad had candied
walnuts among the greens
and the reds.
Progressive Greece.

Then a classic lamb dish.
Classic Greece.
And the waiters
in stuffy white
bellowed a birthday
greeting, dropping the “h”
from my name.
Belted out a non-Grecian
birthday song.
No Grecian dance.

But they gave me
an ice cream treat.
Lighted a solitary
blue candle, which
balanced on the semi-liquid
hills of vanilla, caramel and
walnuts.
The small ice cream hills
illuminated by
the dancing
birthday light.

stair w
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        y stair w
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                              y stair w
                                         a
                                         y stair w
                                                    a
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No escalators to heaven , no free rides .
Just one long hard climb , one step at a time .

Towering giants
Unstable
Slippery footing
Sharp edges
Glass too thin
Handrail too low
Goodness, my legs are trembling
Cowering
Clutching
Struggling
To gain control
Over breaths
Look normal...

Meeting up
In a multistorey
Mall
Looking for mum
In the building
Escelators
Escelators
Everywhere
She's probably
At that shop
At the very
Top

Up we go,
On them escalators
A long long way to go
Heights
Tremors
Just look up
No,
That's the ceiling
Just look straight
At your feet
Keep breathing
Hold on

Up we go
Up we go
Endless flights
Of escalators

Till the final one is passed
Safe on solid ground
I look around
Left and right
Up and down
There she is:
Right at the bottom floor

This is a mockery

The same way I came
The same way I went
Setting my sights
On my slow moving
Target

The way up was hard;
The way down was worse.
So high up
Off the ground
So close up
To the ceiling
Grasping tightly
Nowhere to look
But down
Down
Down

Swaying
Trembling
Feeling like
Falling
The edges will do
Or just simply forwards
Eyes squeezed
Tightly shut
The world spins
How I wish I could
Sit

The long arduous journey
Finally ending,
A leap too early
And we end up
Free falling

It might not
Have been real
But the risk
Is there
Still
And the terror
Exists

I have spent most of my life
walking through department stores.
I have come to feel that
Bill Blass, Ralph Lauren, and Calvin Klein
are close friends.
I ride the escalators for exercise.
I have become a professional cologne tester.
I check my credit rating daily;
American Express knows me
by my first name.
I have been married and divorced three times--
to two mannequins and a sales clerk.
I got stuck once in a revolving door
during the entire "Summer Madness" sale.
During annual clearance I inadvertently
got marked down to $42.50,
but due to inflation,
I have regained my worth.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Customers have torn open the Christmas
chocolates. Shoving it in mouths,
shopping bags, children’s eyes.
Quiet. We are shopping. as. a. family.
Smoke accordions out of Santa’s mailbox. The sprinkler system
hisses stale air. Custodians ride by on their metal cart laughing,
sanitation chemicals flickering out of buckets.
The 80 year-old piano player is hammering out Schoenberg.
Customers shove lamps into their shopping bags, shove children
into them.
Turn on the light Jimmy.
The ninth floor is barricaded off by old woman. They
have turned the clearance divans on their sides
and are throwing toasters. Down in the basement,
the security staff have locked themselves into 2’ by 2’
cells. Fetally-positioned, their panting echoes off stone walls. Static
sizzles on the array of sixteen camera screens. Customers
have begin to bow in the reinforced door next to the two-way mirror.
A fat man is leaning against it. He has been dead
for over an hour. Restaurant staff are tearing
down the great tree. Ornaments funnel down pop-crashing
upwards from the floor. Three pound ceramic dinnerware crashes
into the walnut bar The customers are putting mattresses in their bags,
they are putting the offices in their bags. Human resources
are backed into the employee orientation computer lab. Customers
have poured Starbucks on the circuit-breakers. The lights are dimming,
Escalators are jamming. Children scream
I want to see Santa.
Santa is dead. Employees calmly walk over  his protruding
belly. The velvet and fat feels good on tired
feet. An inhuman voice garbles
The store will be closing.
Families grab onto shelves, racks, other
families. Employees pick up the registers and slam
them on granite counters. Coins explode out like bells. The rotating
doors are not spinning. They are stuck, crunching on limbs.

They always do work
Even when they are broken
They always do work

This is the place where people come to forget that they will die one day.

They let their conscience build up on the linoleum floor in puddles,
deep and dark
And follow the crowd to the next store
And the next
And the next.

This place will bleed you.
It will tear your pockets out of your clothing
And your children’s hands from yours.

A new shirt.
A new TV.
Well done.
You’ve done well.

But when you leave the white walls
The music tinny and dim
Escalators and litter
You still won’t feel free.

The escalator of despair
Was waiting with her normal nonchalance stare
Her teeth constantly in motion
Offering the tip of a landscape below
A place of not knowing, not a place one is keen to go

I stepped on her teeth with huge trepidation
Leaving behind what was once was a friendly station

I rode the escalators down to this place
Reading posters, signs of things that
Were going to take place
Theatre, drama, the musical of my life
A pantomime made of my own strive

I followed the tunnels deeper they fell
Marking out pathways and other people’s  roads to hell

I found myself on a platform
Cold and Bleak
I looked around me in the hope
Of finding someone to whom I could speak

But I found no map of the line I was attending
Instead just a blankness and huge hole, darkness and fright
That looked unending
Looking for direction, for the interchanges that my destination
Was depending.

I could hear the sound of the train approaching
I could feel vibrations and and see rats encroaching
Encroaching on my light now lost, glimpses of my life beginning to rot

Don’t dance over the yellow line they said, stand back
For the train approaching is just ahead
Its lights dancing on the tunnels walls
Announcing its arrival, big not small

The noise is deafening, screeching and loud
The voice of my own despair now hidden in its vacuous cloud

A smashing sound as it brakes through
The blackness into light speeding through
Hugging the platform really tight
Reducing space so as passengers can alight

Doors part open and people descend
On to a platform that appears to have no end
This is not a place to stand still
The body of people is a perfume despair wants to distill

So move down the platform and keep shuffling along
Belongings of your heart held tight moving to the  rhythm of the throng

So I enter the carriage quickly and sit
Next to a man clutching his pit
The pit that comes to close to me
Smells rank and ****** and full of hypocrisy


Off into a place that is forever dark
Momentary fireworks the only sparks
That give you a glimpse of another line
A line perhaps to happiness or somewhere else sublime

Out of nowhere a train caresses, moves so close
and  brings aboard  a message

For other people are traveling too
To places that were not on their list of ‘to do’’
Riding parallel down darkened tunnels
Moving to their own rhythm, humming their own song
Rocked by a train, speeding hastily along
Turning a corner and now that train is gone

So we are not alone on the darkest rides that we take
We are not alone on the escalators that we think I taking us to meet our fate
For we all have a choice an opportunity to ride
Alone or with travelers by our side

-arriving at eglington west station-

there's the fragrance drifting off
of her shoulders
as she checks her reflection
on smartphone mirror app,
floral pattern matching the
bright of her nails,
the sun shining onto sequined flats
that show no wear.

-glencairn, glencairn station-

there's her youth indicated by
backpack, baseball cap,
and conversation subject matter
discussing video game system merit,
there's the hand me down excitement
of muddy knees and torn jeans,

-arriving at lawrence west station-

each millimetre contributing to grimace,
beard whisker, wrinkle stationed
to the sides of each of his eyes,
weary traveller, seemingly ignoring
everyone with grocery bag
occupying chair like child,

-Yorkdale, Yorkdale station-

we used to weave through these crowds
and people watch together,
and the people would watch us,
young love, so simple,
oblivious to stage,

fingers interlocked, blocking
crowds from passing by,
there was the taste of strawberry
banana smoothie, freshly squeezed,
on your lips, we'd race up
escalators, only to circle
back down, we'd find the nook
of book store, to steal a moment,
you'd ignite, ignoring the clatter
of barrista, starbucks adjacent,

and there would walk by or sit
dolled up princess,
adolescent tomboy,
aging cantankerous senior,

these faces haven't changed
as much as ours have.

-please stand clear of the doors-

I’ve fallen out of love
I fell out of lust
A long time ago
Before you even noticed

I wish I still felt the same
as I did that first day
I wish those butterflies
would finally find their way

These escalators are going down
We could take steps backwards
But lose ourselves on the way up

I had high hopes
We could have found
What made us perfect
But now its not worth it
Anymore

Before I was your girl
But now as a woman
I’m not yours

Threads come undone
The pieces
Me and you
Don’t fit

It makes me
Kind of sad
That we lost our
Magic

The Rabbit won't come out of its hat
You can't pick my card
You can't find my heart

The people we were
young love birds
have changed
have lost common ground
on everything

But maybe
in the future
we'll have the same map
we'll meet up at the same place
it'll feel like that first day
even though the past has passed.

The Empire State Building is a giant *******
Concrete is broken, NYPD, taxis racing, red light green light
I enter the hand of the city through it's capillaries breaking mad concrete
Warm gusts of ****, grime, and transportation swallow me
The city feeds off dreams and hope which we personally, willingly give up
We all somehow learn to accept this fate 
The passerby no longer human but broken mirror 
The hand inundates my eyes from breezes of tomorrow
The spacy apartment, and the affluent career and the acquantanceship
Of the handful of New Yorkers that run the hand: all questionable plans today
It's as if the hand's grasp, although sharp and brick, would venerate your intellect, guaranteed
If that's the case, I see wizards of wisdom everyday snoozing on concrete and cardboard and plastic
Bearded, black with dirt and skin, threads ripped by a world inferrior than the one in thier minds
Empire "*******" State  of intellect, scrapping billion dollar clouds
Sardine can subways, escalators, elevators, high on crack **** speed of sound
The cash nerve system meltsdown into golden chips to feed the pigeons
Glass and steel craft spaces for modernity to be sold like a Washington Heights *****
You can feel the growth of the hand at the end of your intestines
It's a warm, uncomfortable vibration revealed in your *******
Foreign tongues buzz through the air, through your hair for 19.95
New York needs a haircut, some profound discipline so we wake up from this bizzare life of welcomed pain
You once charmed me with hopes of culture, open minds, connections, real connections, love and laughter
Yet, Today I am hungry in Murray hill
I am cold in Chelsea
I am broken in Union Square
I ***** in SoHo
I have fallen in the East River
And I bleed on financial monoliths 
Someone have mercy on my wills
It is an intention trying to be fulfilled
But failed when it became self-aware

Crowds of weary people
shuffle from life to life

in the bellies of subways
claws of escalators

past booths of seven-dollar coffees
taking off shoes and jackets

as a voice in the roof says that
the flight to Mumbai,

or wherever, is now boarding.
All of it disappears

because--after these many years--
your face

(I shrug off
my backpack)

your voice
in my ears

when you're at the airport
you may see those flat escalators,
the ones that move,
they're just sitting in the middle
of the airport,
waiting to be stood on,
waiting to move you?
you know those?

You walk on,
you may stand or
you might walk.
You could run.

I run.
I run down the path,
watching the luggage trail
their people along,
zipping by.
I see bright signs,
rushing across my
brain in streaks of
blue,
red,
green.

And all too soon,
the path ends and
I'm ****** back onto solid
ground,
back to reality,
back to
simply
walking.

There's a homeless man,
Just by the first escalators 
Down on the way to the metro. 

I don't think I've seen
Just such a light in men's eyes
As when I told him "Good night!"

Like the light of a lover 
Just before a kiss, huddled 
In mock cold, hold her tight-

He is wrapped by a glove
Of lone nights, averted stares
As cold as dark as reality's plight.

I confess I’m addicted to my phone
My observations tell me I’m not alone
For when you venture out it’s plain to see
The majority of us are glued to our screens

Whether on the tube or pushing a pram
We all have devices in our hands
Surfing the net or social networking
Everyone obsessed with being plugged in

It’s getting so bad even in company
We’re not fully there as we view our screens
And now there are warnings from TFL
Not to fall down escalators as a result of this swell

In checking our messages, writing posts
Face to face interaction up in smoke
We’d rather be alone in the cyber world
Than engaging in reality with other boys and girls

It is an epidemic that’s spreading extremely fast
Thus it seems that human contact
could become a thing of the past
No need to leave the house anymore
When everything can be ordered and delivered to your door

A society of zombies isolated could we become
If we don’t down devices and venture out into the scrum
And mingle with other beings physically there
Where we can look them in the eye
and maintain that stare

Connecting on a basic level without the aid of WiFi
And concentrating on each other
instead of being distracted by
Notifications and little beeps
Incoming communication that never sleeps

And keeps you up all night as your brain just can’t switch off
From all the incessant stimuli we’re inundated with
Time to give it a rest, take a break just for a while
Look up from your laptops and perhaps give someone a smile

Watch where you are going, don’t get yourself run over
Be present in the moment and you hopefully won’t fall over
Have a coffee with someone instead of instant messaging
Regard the world around you taking note of everything

Don’t zone out and go into a solitary trance
Assemble your tribe, spin some tunes, have a little dance
Limit your time on the World Wide Web
Grab yourself a hottie and get jiggy with them instead

I’m talking to myself
As well as anyone else
Your family and chums are precious
And deserve nothing less

Than your undivided attention
For one day there’ll come a time
When perhaps they’re no longer around
And you regret being online.

They had *** everywhere.

In the car,
Parked at Costco,
She teased him,
Bra-less under an unbuttoned shirt,
Her agile hand coated with a thin primer of Vaseline,
She stroked him slowly, precisely with a twist,
As somnolent sad faced suburban Sherpa,
Their neighbours and fellow citizens,
Hauled their apocalypse supplies  
Across pristine acres of fresh asphalt,
Doped by fear,
Trapped inside the pixels of an infinite routine,
Unaware and
Unable to imagine life as a movie.

Out on the highway, as he drove,
She pulled up her skirt
And pulled down her tube top
Trucker’s horns roared their musical approval,
The benefits of a long haul driver were scant and skimpy,
Her ***** alive and anonymous,
Guilt free and aroused.

They ****** in washrooms,
Molested each other on escalators,
Texted friends while they copulated half clothed,
Shared their pride with angels dressed as ******,
And counted their ******* like winnings at a casino,
Excited by the number and the game,
Their brains hot-wired,
Life a blur of alternating currents of sensation.

Death is constant state of ******, he told her,
When we leave this organic realm,
When we have finally turned the oceans into pudding,
And caged all of life,
When it is over,
We will enter into a cosmic stream of pleasure.
This is why the universe is expanding, he told her,
Pleasure is a colossal force,
The big bang was God’s ****** after all,
Her consequence the stars, the galaxies,
The dark palette of her entropy.

He was ******* her on a balcony while watching the moon
And waving to the woman with binoculars
When she asked,
Why is it so difficult,
Why do so many ignite pain and cant despair,
How did the curl and cling of hate
Take such deep root, she asked.

We fear death too well, he said,
And
Within the quick boundary of this moment
As they searched their waft and scent for clues,
They heard a whisper.
Inside the swell,
On top of a crest of acid clear thought
And without regret,
They forgave destiny,
Only to fly to the ground and beyond.

‘I was too young when I fell for God’, she said
‘I heard you’, I said, ‘I said I could hear you’.

The train was busy, far louder than usual,
and we sat together, fingers wound together. Rough cuticles.

What were we doing so young,
getting married before the eyes of our Son?

Twenty-two and not a thought for the future,
though maybe you’ll be slimmer and I’ll be cuter.

‘I know about you two and your motorbike miles’ I said,
her face turned around, tired. It was Dulux paint-chart red.

‘How did you? Did he? I am sorry’ she said,
‘Oh that’s okay, really it’s fine, not to worry'.

Tube train doors opened and I filed out in no line,
she followed behind, slow. Karma had taken her spine.

‘You could wait to hear my explanation’ she said, tired.
Across the tiled platform floor, I carried on uninspired.

‘It was a stupid weekend away, we took the scenic route. Are we okay?’
Full stop pupils and an open mouth comma, what else could she possibly say?

‘It’s only recent, not all that frequent’ she said,
‘Well who knew that Winter was the season of unfair treatment?’ I yelled.

Reached the escalators and walked out single into the fresh air,
turned left onto the street and went looking for the nearest bar.

There's no people around now, just us
no hustle or bustle
no rushing feet of frantic commuters
just us down here, the clean up crews

All the escalators are turned off
so we have to walk all the way down
the lights are always kept on
down here in the underground

No trains now are shooting by
not on the early morning night shift
just me and the morning crews
cleaning up the tunnels and tracks

It get's pretty eerie down here
sometimes you think you hear voices
but usually it's just the rats down here
fighting mating or just squeaking

The air in the tunnels is rather stagnate and stale
in some parts water seeps in for a little while
and what you find on the tracks can be a bizarre list
you never know what you will come across on the night shift


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

The flame
In his chest
The same
To the rest
But twisted
As he was
Blessed
But gifted
With inferiority
And was horribly
Conflicted
Of the message
He was meshing
With the decrepit
Feeling
Of his fleeting
Half stepping
To the
Recollections
Of his blessings
That he was tempted
To dissect
From the crowd
Inflicted
Despite the
Shroud
Of clouded
Bouts
Torn from
The panicked ****
Of the phobias
He knew they were scared of
And glared
Right through them
Before he opened up
His coat
And started shooting
Proving
Others wise
In the silent
Reprise
Of 45's
And nines
He smiled
In the exile
Of fear
Escaping
Through
The fading
Lights
Of dying eyes
In the wild
Surmise
That with each
Trigger squeeze
Eased him
Into shame
As he
Aimed
To please
For the release
Of lives
Crawling
For the
Finished
Lines
And in gorgazmic
Slitherings
He delivered
The final blows
With power ups
And scores
Progressing
The killing
As he reloads
With shrilling
Grins
And stints
Of compassion
Fashioning
The rationed
Satisfaction
He received
From the screaming
Mothers and babies
Brothers and maybes
Splattering
On the plastic trees
Of escalators
And skeezes
That laid shuttering
Headless
Upon the exits
Of his
Insurrected mind
And he was just fine
With dying
In kind
And he was just fine
Shining from
The shrine
Of Santa
In a sonata
Of solidarity
To the led
Soldering morals
In a story
Of victory
And of
Personal glory
For the lords
Of defeat
Seething
In the completeness
Of a defeatist
As he stuck
The heaters
In his mouth
And was out
Without
One doubt
As to what
Nothing
Means

The ones who walk fast will reach sooner,

The ones who walk slow, reach later.

And even the ones who don't walk at all will reach the end one day.

We all end up at our destinations.

each nun my mother sees is shorter than the one after it.  this too shall pass?  she remains nonverbal.  I try to include my son.  my depression is a tractor beam that attracts newborns.  my thoughts are a thought below the whimsical race.  I take photos of escalators paralyzed by three dimensions.  I give them as gifts to my father lost at land and sitting on steps to hear the silence in his head.  a toy pup expires with a yip in a ransacked store.  you are made melancholy not by the pup but by its fallen battery pack belly.  I say to a pockmark what I say to immortality.

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I prefer winter skies.
I prefer ties over skirts.
I prefer brown eyes to blue.
I prefer country over pop.
I prefer pears over the freshest picked apples.
I prefer my tears over my smile.
I prefer tall to short.
I prefer silence.
I prefer swim trunks to bikini's.
I prefer dim lanterns to light my way
instead of blinding factory flashlights.
I prefer rugby.
I prefer Sprite over Coke.
I prefer grey.
I prefer pins to brooches.
I prefer journals with ink spots splattered on every page
than a pristine piece of copy paper.
I prefer brownies.
I prefer salads over fries.
I prefer stairs instead of escalators.
I prefer longer hair over short on girls.
I prefer harsh gusts of wind that bites my skin
than muggy city "air".
I prefer Airwalk over Converse.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that this world we're on
is going to just fade away
into nothing