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BLACKOUT, TWO THOUSAND THREE
As a poet, I’ve always
wondered
what it would be like
if every office, every store,
every apartment in this massive,
wondrous, concrete hive
that is New York,
suddenly dumped all of its people
onto the street at the same time.
Today (lucky me) I found out.
I learned some lessons
quickly—
walking is better than standing still.
Sitting is even better than walking.
Sitting still while others are moving
is interesting, to say the least.
Especially when they are moving aimlessly,
cluelessly, restlessly,
turning in slow circles, a human stew
being stirred by an unseen chef,
looking up or scanning the non-existent horizon.
To push beyond disaster
takes planning.
In this city, to plan on anything is impossible.
Overheard on the
street:
"This is like a really bad street fair."
"Excuse me, what are you standing in line for?"
"We know who did this, ya know what I’m sayin’?"
While the hard cases, strewn at random
on the ground around Port Authority,
don’t even know there’s anything wrong.
Today, we have
permission
to talk to our neighbor,
share bottled water, flaky cell-phones, directions,
war stories, candy bars, commiserations.
Permission to give a standing ovation
to the lady bus driver
who rode up on sidewalks, cut off truckdrivers,
and air-conditioned, single-passenger luxury cars
to get her sweaty, working-class people
to the arterial main-line home.
We applauded her at
every aggressive merge,
every intersectional triumph,
every light-pole and bumper avoided.
A great roar went up
when we finally saw the Jersey sun
lowering through the eerie, red-lit tunnel.
Looking on the bright
side, keeping paranoia down,
let’s just say it was only human error.
Late-night TV’s lousy anyway.
Perhaps we’ll even see the goddamn stars tonight.
Sharon Lynn Griffiths was born and raised in New York City, but has lived
in urban North Jersey for the last 13 years. She has been writing poetry
for about that long as well. Sharon has been published in Long Shot, The
Paterson Literary Review, the Cafe Review, and most recently in Exit 13.
At various points in her life, she was a late-night talk show host on
radio; a brown belt in karate, and auditioned for the Milwaukee
Symphony—but her favorite job was teaching communication and job skills to
adult students in Newark. She lives in a happy little house in the Heights
(of Jersey City) with Al Sullivan, author and newspaper reporter; and six
cats who all just kind of wandered in the side door over the last few
years. |