Commuting into Myself A Promissory Reincarnation The Blight that United Us

Commuting into Myself

Bob Mc Neil

The fare to travel this visceral subway always goes up.

Commuting into myself reveals train tracks are my bones, third rails are my nerves, and hungry rats encapsulate my disposition.

Superego Transit Cops believe my feelings could be underground cells, all anarchistic in nature, so, they check the bags under my eyes, considering if that’s where I keep my pipe bomb visions.

My ill temper transfers from train to train, from thought to thought. Sure enough, my neuroses out gripes sexagenarian grumblers with each train delay, derelict aspirations panhandle, pleading to get some pleasure, and my other big bipolar hordes can’t get their problems through the exits.

The Inner Voice Address System apologizes about the traffic up ahead. It explains why turtles in a tar pit would be better at transporting me to my destination.

Ever a philomath, I inspect the transit map and seek life’s right station. Maybe, perhaps on the next ride, I’ll find it.

Sergey

A Promissory Reincarnation

Bob Mc Neil

Next life, I’ll screw up even better than the way I did during this one. I mean a Titanic, Hindenburg, Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor, and Exxon Valdez oil spill combined in a trimester mess up. You’ll see, next life.

Bob McNeil, writer, editor, and spoken word artist, is the author of Verses of Realness. Hal Sirowitz, a Queens Poet Laureate, called the book “A fantastic trip through the mind of a poet who doesn’t flinch at the truth.” Among Bob’s recent accomplishments, he found working on Lyrics of Mature Hearts to be a humbling experience because of the anthology’s talented contributors. Copies of that collection are available here: https:// amzn.to/3bU8Loi

Sergey

The Blight that United Us

Bob Mc Neil

With the legs of a thief, the plague came, And victims from the living spectrum Fell into a feverish vacuum, Rivaling the fires of a crematorium As the strangling pain of suffocation Wrung their lungs. With the legs of a thief, the plague came, Giving us the obsessiveness Howard Hughes knew By stealing our option to go ungloved, By stealing our partiality to be unmasked, By imprisoning us in paranoia Behind physical and emotional bars, Our hearts felt thwarted. With the legs of a thief, the plague came. For that time, there were pleas to something divine. Every sphere of the atmosphere could hear Petitions for salvation. With the legs of a thief, the plague came. Nonetheless, many blest the first responders

And hospital workers Who were stationed in adversity-drenched trenches, Who were providing the tests and giving medicine When certain politicians only shared a lot of wind From their chins. With the legs of a thief, the plague came, And people spoke of the pandemic in the past tense, Waiting for a time hence Where there is no scourge, And less viral lives will emerge.

Ekaterina Tutynina