Reading in the hole:

So i don’t forget how many floors down
i take the elevator, hand powered, to the lounge below the sewers,
warm because it never sleeps, no light to suck our energy, no clock,
hundreds of stars from the mirror ball reflecting a white flame
of recycled gas, all the colors of exhaustion, past and future,
lumped together to ooze through one another
like looking through a thick book printed on transparencies—
what words you see are an augury of this moment—
today I see “totem” and flipping the book over I see “run up”.

every fifth reader is female, one of every 4 men is shirtless.
im the only one without shoes.
whoever is reading when the train rumbles above us
has to buy the next round—
these are some ground rules, underground

some read from hand bound pages, some read from the backs of their fluttering hands;
i wait for words to appear inside my eyelids and wear such focused lenses
i cant see beyond my breath
which keeps trying to permeate the ceiling of light nocturnal industry—
tattoo parlors and stamping machines too difficult to restart
so they never stop: self-lubricating, self-generating millstone/flywheels
encrusted with one simple prayer spinning too steadily to ever be read