Silent Masks

Yesterday’s Time,
invented by man to fill
empty places.

Most dream easily,
but in The City of time ignoring 24 hours,
ticking illusion awaits delusion’s mask.

As the subway empties
and yesterday's leather and metal straps fade out,
their idle swing overhead is but a shadow dance,
a balance of gray support giving way to orange upholstered benches.

Sitters exuding the latest vogue shades
cover cunning eyes waiting for another of yesterday’s hula-hoop hips to move.

Crowded subway.
Brush this.
Touch that.

All the while NY Times folded accordion style,
stretches forward from tortoise shell glasses,
as feet of Florsheim endowed wingtips hug
undercarriage tightly,
avoiding crowded car,
the shoeshine woes for those with Wall Street image
sitting fearfully,
feeling carefully,
whispering the 1% morning prayer:
“pick-pocket blues,
stay away from me.”

Thus the ticking silently,
akin to the Kafka-like adding machine offices
once thriving with hourly wages,
now awaiting wrecking balls,
their barren floors still alive with Mad Men
and insatiable ambition,
now but yesterday's power in limbo,
ambition’s commerce-caves of dust-etched ghosts
staring vacuously skyward for...

Time ticks anxiously.

For the Happy Hour rapidly approaches,
the Every Hour, for a bar is a bar even without patrons,
even when chairs are stacked on tables
and tired neon Pabst Blue Ribbon signs flicker.

The 3rd Avenue watering hole where yesterday’s designer sneakers are replaced by today’s versions with more pizazz peeking out from skinny-tapered-denim covered legs.

Dollar a shot.

“Make it two.”

“Hit me again’ ‘til after 3 AM
and Time delivers the Klee-like night
of color and clashing reality.

Ticking loudly now…

42nd street once more than just crossroads,
now a glittering cover for continued
bright-lit consumption,
waiting to become merely another passage of time.

Forever DeNiro’s Taxi Driver lament,
windshields mirroring slumbering skies invaded by
glaring marquee lights,
bulbs 1-5-7 burned out.
2-4-8 & 9 blinking,
strobing its stabs at eyes gazing out
from a backseat respite.
The checkered yellow stops
just another all-nighter about to wind down,
emptying the cab of another experience in progress.

Such is from sunrise train
to ledger sheet hell,
to Happy Hour escape,
to bright lights dream-believe.

Ticking stops.

The Big Empty now.

Night train's end of the line.
That place where worn and stained stairwells lead
through turnstile exits up past littered passages
leading to a nocturnal desert's oasis
atop high-rises about to become witness to a city's sunrise,
where gull, pigeon,
ferry boat and sky meet for another encounter.

Nature’s surreal wonderment awaits,
as today's empty places standing free
make ready to provide undying chronology,
even as faceless clocks enjoin the desolation inherent of silent masks.