Riding the DC Metro in the eighties, Durutti Column in my
headphones, the only place I ever knew that music – mechanical,
melancholy, soundtrack for commuting to the wrong job, women
in wrinkled skirts and dark hose, how men could wear bow ties
without a trace of humor, some scanning Tom Clancy
but most deep with bound reports, noting them in pencil
because they lived for doing, for telling others what to do,
for anger with strategic purpose, leaving and arriving
at their homes in darkness holding hours more of work,
solo kitchen island dinners pale and brooding,
nightmares about those working harder and making anger
count for more, and Vini Reilly’s grey guitar murmured
on the Metro and I knew I would fail at this, could see it
in the blanks of those I passed, even the man asking for change
who said “That’s racism” to everyone when they declined
and who’s to say he was wrong, hanging on
in a town of former student council presidents, all of them
trying to make him disappear and me already half invisible
at every client meeting, but Durutti Column reminded me
of where I could still be completely, how my dim back
and forth as daily cargo could shudder to a stop,
once stuck in powerless dark below the streets
my panic rose until I finally made it home
without the extra time my days demanded,
but I could only hear Durutti Column while
on the Metro, drum machines and guitar shards
of a music barely held together,
his mumbled songs my ghost waiting to return
to my body, staring out the window at the stalled
and sullen state of Virginia.

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Image: “Monument” from The Dollar Store Estate Sale Collection