My swift-footed rescuer urged me to the front of the train
Just as a gang of miscreants burst through
Blood lusted for no particular reason
Bellowing remarks about the anger of the day
Unprovoked carnage for those on the wrong side of history
Yet this man, whoever he is
Calmy helped me evade through an emergency door up front
Dashing up a flight of stairs
To witness my first daylight in what felt like months
His garb was peculiar
Neatly put together in jacket and tie
Hand-stitched?
Oh, you better believe it!
Carrying the vibe of an aristocrat,
He gave a deep bow before he spoke
His words coming from a bygone era
“Not often, my son, do men escape from that army of harpies.
Driven by ideology fomented in this city’s barricades
They lash out, and destroy as it is written in their syllabi.”
“But by that look in your eye, confusion even fear I can see
I immediately know for certain, you are not one of them.
Tell me then stranger traveler, what has compelled you to make that perilous journey
From north to south?”
Visibly shaken, I respond with a stutter
“I couldn’t possibly tell you
My bearings are still so disoriented.
What’s real or fake, alive or dead,
Is it even in my destiny for me to find out?
But what I do know, there’s an immovable force deep inside me
Who claims to know my whereabouts”
He smiles with reassurance
“You are not the first one I have met.
Lost souls seeking answers here on God’s cosmic plain.
Fitting you start in Boston, our nation’s first great city.”
“Here I stand before you with great dismay
Walking these foreign streets night and day.
Mayor I once was, I made a deal to politically survive
And now, vanquished and banished,
Lamenting what my great Massachusetts has become.”
“Hundreds of years ago there was turmoil abound
Not so dissimilar to what is before us here and now.
I assembled New England’s finest, in Hartford one winter
To determine our states’ fate and a new path of self-sufficiency”
“A pragmatist I ultimately was
Perhaps I should have been more fierce
And followed the notions of my brethren
Who were far more hellbent”
“As I look to the North
And now New Hampshire and Maine sealed their fate
In hardship, but purpose,
To build their own nation state.”
“And me, Boston and Massachusetts missed their chance,
So I’m stuck living with self doubt on what I could’ve done differently.”
“Come with me, you’ll see what this city has become.
A glorified papermill of meaningless diplomas
With arbitrary seals of approval.”
Calmer now I felt in the hands of so astute a guide
I followed with no apprehension to learn more of where we went wrong.