The Songs We Sing

People connect, people want to connect, if stranger-you, stranger as you find yourself, as I see you, wish to speak to me, The Poet once asked, then why shouldn’t you? We lose touch with it, we try to tease it out in poetry and song, and wrong it comes In the wrong form and shape it shows, we are embarrassed to try to: I am embarrassed to know. There are things on YouTube that make us cry. Homelessness on YouTube that make us cry But why? I lived in Brooklyn for twenty-five, twenty five years of me in Brooklyn and I saw them everywhere. With no place to go, the phantoms of the train. Those who tried asked for dollars and cents and some didn’t. And a lot of them smoked crack, many of them brimming high, capsuling, in clouds of mist of drink, most of them had to. & there are nights of coldness collected in the steel, and there is blue-coldness that hardens the steel & to them, we look as blue as it, unable to peel the ring off their voices, silence, not flesh-like like they feel when the blue-coldness touches their skin, & to them some of these holidays make no sense, for out of misfortune or kin they have not a thing to attend In subway carts I see some leaning, bending with the weight of O’-that-feeling O’ that hit of steel that makes them want to Spiritual, black women prayed for them and sang to them I remember. Y algunas, las viejitas, afraid to look their way, said an ave-maria in their heads. Some white folks prayed, others gave change and some played in their minds other moments that made this one naught. But that was all of us. We made the train ring with our laughter and indifference O’-that-feeling is why I can’t quit And homeless they are and have been and then has-beens & we give change and expect none in return These subway doors open: “O’ I hope he gets off” “He’s making me sick” The songs we sing People want to connect even when they don’t want to stranger, you & through train-sliding doors, a glimpse of this, and we try, we try not to lose sight of it locked eyes looking and no fear human recognizing human & no fear pain recognized by pain & no fear & no fear, and fear not fear & they will slide And you will move - and you may remember and may not