The Underground Man. Jasen Sousa

      

      The Underground Man

      Other books by Jasen Sousa

      Poetry:

      Life, Weather

      A Thought and a Tear fir Every Day of the Year

      Close Your Eyes and Dream With Me

      Almost Forever

      A Mosaic of My Mind

      17-24: Selected Poems of Jasen Sousa

      Humming Eternity

      Somewhere Lost

      Dampness

      Fiction:

      Fancy Girl

      ………..

      The Underground Man

      by

      Jasen Sousa

      Editor: Kalimah Mustafa

      The Underground Man

      Copyright © 2017 by Jasen Sousa

      All Rights Reserved

      Editing by Kalimah Mustafa

      Photographs by Jasen Sousa

      All rights reserved under international and Pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, electronic, mechanical, or by any other means, without written permission of the author.

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      ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2879-6

      In Memory

      of

      Alfred Soccorso

      Chalk Dust

      I placed my ear on the concrete in a park over a spot

      where I lost a lot of blood as a 6-year-old. I closed my eyes

      and attempted to find the sounds of a different Somerville

      hidden somewhere underneath layers of heart shaped chalk dust.

      A tennis ball

      makes contact with a broomstick

      I turned into a bat.

      A tire swing

      sounds like an old ship leaving the harbor

      every time someone swung it around.

      A fireman’s wheel

      at the top of a wooden structure

      that could take you to anywhere you wanted to travel.

      An orange box

      in the summer opened by a recreation leader

      that contained a treasure of games and fun.

      A basketball

      that makes a magical sound falling

      through a metal single rim.

      Skateboards, bicycles, and scooters

      that should have been an introduction

      to the traffic of adulthood.

      The sunset

      above me that sank behind houses on Lexington Avenue.

      The streetlights

      letting me know that an older group of kids

      would be coming to the park for a different type of enjoyment.

      As I removed my ear from my youth

      I yearned for it to be as simple as walking across the street

      and playing a game. A childhood I almost forgot

      because of the drugs and death

      that wrapped themselves around my friends

      like the coldest night of their lives.

      Hopper

      It’s alone

      a gentle baby blue bicycle

      chained to a “No Parking Street Cleaning” sign

      with a missing front wheel

      and a seat that has been worn down

      so much that the fibers are sticking up

      like hair on cold skin.

      It’s alone

      a book left halfway open text down

      somewhere on a Boston bench

      surrounded by peeling Green Monstah

      paint staring down between

      shifting planks at finger nails, nip bottles,

      and grasshoppers.

      It’s alone

      in a room no one will ever enter

      a cigar box filled with passionate

      letters sealed in stamped envelopes

      never to be read by the one

      they were intended for.

      It’s alone

      in a subway tunnel on

      an early Saturday morning. A translucent image

      appears in a tinted window of a broken

      down train while others

      continue on to their destinations.

      Disconnect

      Consecutive days, a constant spitting

      in the sky that doesn’t allow me to open my eyes

      completely. I have viewed the splendidness and sliminess

      of the city through puddles littered

      with natural and human litter.

      Routine continues, "have to be”

      at places that cause knots in my stomach like

      old sneaker laces. Stuck, like spots on the sidewalk. Stuck

      to the bills and the poor souls who mail them out. I write

      letters to my neighborhood friend

      in the Billerica House of Corrections and wonder

      as I lick the envelope

      who is more free?

      Wasted potential,