First, a bus that trudges
the blizzard, gathering
angry passengers who bitch
about cancelled flights, airport delays,
the snow ashes drowning the world,
and the fucking cold--no wonder
no one ever takes the bus! one shouts
as we prowl deeper into the storm,
blind and blurry wet. We make
Midway five ours late, shivering
in serpentine rows lugging
our baggage past gates of
the stuck, the delayed, the postponed,
terminal's an insane sleepover,
faces hypnotized and narcotized
by florescent gloom, deep sea creatures
insulted by the endlessness of waiting
and the gray gathering of snow,
anxious and apprehensive, the phantasmagorical
huddled hordes, each seeking asylum
somewhere else. The announcements
arrive in muffled staccato, more
delays, cancellations, gate changes,
and with each garbled message
a wave of discontent washes
through the terminal like
an anguished flood. This
should not be happening.
We deserve better, don't we?
But when our plane finally arrives
like some great ghost
from the cold migraine,
a hideous phantom,
an icy monster,
an antediluvian horror
in the fog, we board,
in silence and shame--gone
are the flamingo dreams and conch shell
cocktails, glimmers of pink crab bisque
and sand dollars, palm trees
and sun-drenched cabanas
and manatees floating
gracefully in cabbages and
mangrove swamps. All of these
fantasies have been rubbed free
of the minds' wrinkles. We rise
into the night, exhausted
and transported into the great darkness
that surrounds us all, the absolute zero
of our lives, alone and drifting south,
into the starless flowered land,
the land of hibiscus and camellias,
of gladioli and exotic banyan trees,
of Florida, that great dying land
where we all must go to die
some day.
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