Subway Cyborgs

Down into the sweltering underground
I go

I am bumped and jostled by sweaty
commuters. Deprived of sufficient coffee
they appear robotic on their way as corpy
wage slave drones

I pretend they are robots or better still
technologically enhanced humans
controlled by super secret artificial
intelligence whereabouts unknown

This strategy allows me to dodge
and duck them without anger or words
like motherfucker. Even the mad rantings
of undomiciled crazy man in flat fedora
stinking of urine and Thunderbird thundering  on about deep state control and Quanon
resistance and scaring little girls does not
perturb me

Nope. Not one but. Cause I know that he
not as he appears. I know that he is a cyborg
gone rogue and smarter and more cunning than all other humanoids or little girls

But all this strenuous exercise in no empathy impersonalism has made me
feel almost like...one of them.