a ride for holding on

by the seat of one’s pants.

The smell of cabbage soup

kiosk type wrapped food

of rancid body odours.

Hopping along in a rhythmic

Hancock-bounce over grey

cobblestones of a Viennese

road design tradition.

At Holy City’s stop the wale of

the sickened bus spews out

its entire content.

People rush like a shoal of fish

gape-mouthed into the open

past casual news stands

the familiar homeless paper

seller.

The sound of knocking shoes

murmuring conversation

singing of a female refugee

echoes through the access

tunnel connecting to the trains.

Catching the next U4 train to

the city’s core many will rush

Time: Two minutes to take-off.

At last jockeying past the slow

walkers has ended

finding a red seat in traveling

direction of this train

noting down poetic ideas into

the red moleskine notebook.

For a Saturday lunchtime enough

passengers travel

while the poet misses his usual

yoghurt treat from Nica

more so to study new angles

for her portrait

she’d asked for cautiously.

Today’s a solo visit at boesner’s

artist requisite supermarket

where one finds everything

needed to express one’s own art

but let the postman deliver the

yearly comprehensive catalogue

as Mona has encouraged the

artist who lives close to the poet’s

heart.

A fortnight ago she left the party

too early and the artist found

himself as a lost soul drowning

in the red cabernet-sea of loneliness

where he’d lost his conscious to

reality and painted with his soul.

He fell from the heavens of solitude

like a stone –

That’s how Icarus must have felt –

Falling onto a sea made of

tempered glass.

 

zoltanzelan

ZJG-POEtry’16.