She walks in through the closing door
with a friend, who takes a seat
on the end
of the 1 train orange row
and scratch graffiti-tagged window

“Showw don’ ovah!”
she instructs me,
and my head jolts up
my eyes off my lap,
and I make room.

They talk inflamedly
burning with passon for
narco raps upon cocaine-charged friends,
who all's in jail who can’t make bail
and how are they gonna come up with money for them,
at which point they each let fall a dollar single
into a lady’s
cup held in one hand,
sign in the other

“Desperate and Destitute
Help Needed and Appreciated
Moral or Financial”

I drop my three quarters in succession,
and only after I sit back down do I realize
She’s pregnant.
She smiles at me, her eyes gleam
omniscient gratitude
omnipotent compassion
pure in all respects
virginal but downtrodden
a perpetual tear-trail
marks her face
and I wonder if within her womb
grows
a new-era Jesus
who won’t be born to a manger
but to a subway roll
not a wagon shuttle from Bethlehem to Jerusalem
but for New York City,

Will her son heal AIDS sufferers with his bare crackling hands
like lepers?
I wonder if her shepherd sonofabitch boyfriend is gonna pay alimony,
or since god is responsible shouldn’t he do that?
I wonder where I can get some frankincense round here
so I can be one of them Zoroastrian princes
but how will I be able to see
the star
if its light is but a backdrop to
Factory Gas?

Only George Bush will see it,
or one of his aids,
all thinking they’re the omnipotent ones
with computers and satellites in their bulletproof
limousines
they will spot the star
and Bush will order
all babies with beautiful eyes
the entire city over
to be drowned in the Hudson River to prevent
a revolution, an overthrowing
of the metaphorical blowing
of Corporate Cocks
(that goes down all over DC from the Oval Office to the National Archives),
of a systematic swallowing
of cancerous gametes,
of the subsequent spitting
of stained semen unto
the Constitution and Declaration and Emancipation Proclamation
so that Jefferson’s penmanship is blurred,
Life Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness is deferred
freedom of speech right of people to organize deterred
separation of church and state is blown away
by Jerry Falwell.

So, Reverend, tell me,
since Al Qaeda
smashed our planes through a city of sinners
and homosexuals and liberals
and abortionists and HIV carriers
and Jews and welfare recipients,
will they be welcomed with open arms into the Moral Majority?
Or will they have to remove the turbans from their head and shave their beards,
don a respectable suit so they look spiffy for cameras,
and change their five letters ALLAH
to your beloved JESUS,
who now is curled in the womb of one of those you consider to be
of various parasitic categories
stains upon your Calvinist utopian society,
seducing your children stealing your jobs
John Calvin, what about Hobbes?
are tigers allowed into heaven?
do they have to give you all their money
or can they already pass by Peter scott free,
being as they never committed original sin.
Does god will that they be endangered?
Do you feel the human race is endangered?
Perhaps if the Nature Conservancy
placed us on the endangered list
Wars would be illegal.

All this thinking
was interrupted
when the lady in the doo-rag
asked me if I had a pen,
and being a poet
riding the 1 train home from my feature at the Knitting Factory,
I responded that I usually do
and from my pocket produced
a red pen
which she used to write numbers
on a receipt folded many times over.

The train pulls into 96, my stop
she stops scribbling extends the pen
I say you can keep it if you still need it
she says I still need it but do you need it back
I say nah I got some at home ('course they're all blue)
she says alright, thanks, n’ keeps it
and tells me she likes my shirt,
Vibrant as
Hell,
colors splashed red yellow green
and Bob Marley exalting in the middle of it all
his dreads fly into the sleeves
his mouth cries his eyes slide closed
he ceases to breathe
locked
like he dead.
Virgin María crosses into the next car
I go home and wait for a star.