while the homeless madman on the stalled D train at W 4th street
wonders why his life is the way that it is
we’ve been sitting here for ten minutes
because of an incident at 34th street
it’s always something in this city
that makes you think the yokels who live somewhere else
might be the ones who are really doing it right
and he’s pacing up and down the train car
shoving a dirty, mangled subway soft drink cup in our faces
but no one is biting this morning
there are world cup games to go to
and the yankees fans are already on here
drunk and belligerent before noon
i’m late for a baseball card show on 42nd st
occasionally, he stops pacing and shouts
you think i like panhandling like this?
you think i’m happy with the way my life turned out?
i don’t even know how it got like this
i’m only forty-four years old
oh how did it get like this?
nobody says anything to any of his ranting
a stalled D train isn’t the place
for cheap dime-store psychoanalysis
nobody’s heard him anyway
people have their heads buried in their phones
and the yankees fans think they’ve put something over on the world
by sneaking tallboys on the train
i keep thinking how up there on the street
are those famous basketball courts and the IFC film center
the apartment where bob dylan lived
when he was still young and hungry
and how one time my wife and i
saw little steven at a pizza joint
dressed just like he does on stage with springsteen
while the homeless madman on the stalled D train at W 4th street
wonders why his life is the way that it is
paces and shouts at us all
about his helpless plight
i think about how sports card shows are over-rated
that they never have what i truly want
why i’m even going to a card show at fifty-two?
spending money on shit that i don’t need
and this gets me thinking about
the futility of life in general
and the many ways we work just to kill time
about how if this nutbag pulls out a gun or a knife
i seem like the kind of asshole that could easily
die a pointless new york city death
a one-time headline
on the cover of the new york post
i think about how i wish
i’d snuck a tallboy on the D train too
just to have that one last cold beer
and how new york yankees fans
are such belligerent dipshits
that they don’t deserve the team they root for
i’m only forty-four years old
oh how did it get like this?
i think about how one bad day
one bad week
one bad year
one singularly bad decision
made in the heat
of the moment
can have you reaching
for the mangled subway cup
on the course toward
one bad life
and all of the questions
that come along with that.
John Grochalski is the author of five poetry collections, three novels, and the novella Wolves of Berlin Play Amateur Night at the Flute and Fiddle Pub (Alien Buddha Press 2024). He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
