Subway Seethe by J. Allyn Rosser
A fellow poetry lover recommended J. Allyn Rosser’s Foiled Again, and I read it over the weekend. I was not previously familiar with the poet, and I liked this collection a lot. I feel I have to share this one because it very eloquently expresses my feelings every time someone runs a red light, flies up a lane about to be closed when tens (or hundreds!) of cars are more courteously merging and waiting, shows up in my lab expecting me to drop everything to address his/her issue, sends an e-mail demanding an immediate response. I can understand being in a hurry. I can’t understand such total disregard for the fact that someone else might be in a hurry, too. It’s the arrogance that takes my breath away, and I love how ridiculous Rosser makes the offender appear. My favorite line is: Can he catch up with his soul? Can he, indeed?
I hate rude behavior in a man; won’t tolerate it.
—Captain Woodrow F. Call in Lonesome Dove, after beating the snot (and various other bodily liquids) out of a decidedly rudely-behaving man.
Subway Seethe
By J. Allyn Rosser
What could have been the big to-do
that caused him to push me aside
on that platform? Was a woman who knew
there must be some good even inside
an ass like him on board that train?
Charity? Frances? His last chance
in a ratty string of last chances? Jane?
Surely in all of us is some good.
Better love thy neighbor, buddy,
lest she shove back. Maybe I should.
It’s probably just a cruddy
downtown interview leading to
some cheap-tie, careerist, dull
cul-de-sac he’s speeding to.
Can he catch up with his soul?
Really, what was the freaking crisis?
Did he need to know before me
if the lights searching the crowd’s eyes
were those of our train, or maybe
the train of who he might have been,
the person his own-heart-numbing,
me-shoving anxiety about being
prevents him from ever becoming?
How has his thoughtlessness defiled
who I was before he shoved me?
How might I be smiling now if he’d smiled,
hanging back, as though he might have loved me?
