Notes while Wasted in the Friday Night Subway after Finding a Pen in the Coalish Valley of Subway Tracks

the new york air had sickened
with the spring we'd been expecting
the thrushes of concrete branches
moved by urban adulation

this Black history month
was our personal longest and personal best
with cold weather recessing
and hipsters lipping secrets behind the blue girders of Jefferson
their pea coats flap like American flags
over the departed deserts of track work

this subway full of sleepers
their pocked redness, their face-puffs
the long inflation of the oldest freedom
the cool light-blueness of L-Train benches
what it symbolizes to the standers
and the voices pouring in at Montrose Avenue