The Silver Face

Buskers came and went, not worth
writing about really. Jazz trumpeteer,
soul singer, Hendrix style guitarist who
staked out the Jackson stop off the blue line

and fumbled along blues chords. The good
ones closed their eyes when they played
and the bad ones did, too. In between were
the ones who nudged their open cases and
roped eye contact with a lasso. Just lives

like any other who passed by and gave money
or didn't - blinking lights in a tunnel or
split vocal chords looking to shout some
kind of noise into what is only silence ever,

the hum rumble of the trains that devours

everything. And if they do not sing? If they do not

play or burst? Suppose he stands in quiet grey

painter's clothes wearing kneepads and black boots,

boxes of junk arranged about him like an insect. His deep

gloves hide silver fingers that splay and clench

at the end of an arm akimbo, straight, akimbo

again to the silent rhythm of Billie Jean from unseen

speakers. Suppose you see all of this but you do not

really see any of it because of his face. It is silver

like the fingertips you can just make out, too

silver. You wonder at the hope that it is paint

as the contours which make a face disappear

beneath the smoothness of silver. You see hollow

slits above the nose that fill with silver at each blink,

the thin line of a mouth closed tightly, a patch

of stubble breaking through the silver smooth chin.

Suppose he does not speak. Suppose his face is set.

Yet he dances. There is no sound anywhere

but the echo of distant trains and there is horror

as you knock the face from the body and watch

it shatter, like glass.