Rainy Days
Notes: The silver mechanical worm eats air. Every fifteen minutes or so, hundreds of air men and woman hurry down the worms tunnels, carrying dark must smells and screaming as they run, tripping over each other like Spaniards running from bulls. Air fathers and mothers fling their squirming children off the tracks, away from the worm, away from danger, into a sea of impatient animals, before being crush boned and erased by the hunger of the mechanical worms scheduled assaults. Sometimes if you sit with a face towards the tracks you can feel the anguish, moan and confusion of air people rubbing against your cheek, slipping between your negative space and finding small concrete walls to cower against.
With each arrival, animals drag possessions, transportation aids, numerous garments, pounds of cloth, electronic communication devices, musical recordings, writing. They form orderly lines that start at black strips near the edge of the tracks where the worm is automatically programmed to stop. Most are quiet. Feeding their ears music or staring blankly at posters on the wall that highlight the positive attributes of other possible possessions.
Here comes the worm. A light breeze of the young and fast, slightly cool with confident hearts that easily escape the worms mouth. Then the hum of feet, and the shrill pitch of screams come barreling across each animals windswept face. As the worm juts past it starts to slow it’s march, stops and opens rectangular doors, allowing the humans to sit within it’s carpeted stomach. As the worm pauses, navigating my way in and around lost air children stunned by a stationary glimpse of their childhood horror, I sit. Deeply cradled in plastics and wonder how long Bart will take to get underneath the Bay today.