3:30 A.M.

I caught the train to the airport
out of a place    asphyxiated
below tenemants
                            where
the rubbish and unwanted
are just the same
                             on a cold
cold morning, the coldest I'd known
in a long
               long time.  The kind of cold
that tears the soul

like a gunshot in silence.

The kind of cold that hollows us
like the half-empty train cars
we ride
              without expression
they rumble into the January onslaught.
The pre-dawn sky, a blue
from the lowest circle of hell:

"Hey bro, you know if there´s
a Taco-Burrito King near?"

"I don´t know man, but I think there's
one of the Harlem stop.

But, I haven't been there since
I was a teenager."

"Hey bro, Are you Sure or Are you not?
Cause its fuckin cold out there"

"All I know is there was
one back in the day"

"Thanks bro, but I'm not goin out there
unless I know.

I'm still real hungry though..."

We endure these rides, these endless lines
from here to there    yet all the same.

Our frozen lungs struggle
through the steel walls we breathe.