Flight Delay, IAH

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Airport terminals were once places of hello's and goodbye's.
Now sterile, rooms of the dead, like purgatory,
Bodiless voices come over the PA,
Announcing someone's name --
 about to miss a departure
 forgot an item at security
 an offer to stand y for extra cash.

These quiet, commercial, market hallways
Tell us everything good aout a city --
 the best restaurants
 a spa or hotel
 a each or the mountains
But nothing of the invisible ones --
 of the poor, the old
 the empty houses and unkempt lawns
 the vacant factories and abandoned warehouses.
Those invisibles are left secret.
Everyone smiles in these marketing posters.
Everyone is happy in the city beyond the terminal.
Travel to and from makes you happy, and that makes us happy.

Airports were once stages for movies --
 drama
 romance
 comedy --
But they are no longer places for the public to share.
We take a taxi or our girlfriend drops us off.
A quick goodbye next to the car,
Then swallowed up by the electronic glass doors.
Does everyone left behind worry -- let's be honest, here --
Worry if this will be the last time we kiss?
Today's movies can't romanticize the drop-off kiss.

In these sterile terminals, the Jackson 5 plays somewhere
When the Safety Measures Warning God stops talking.
Safe music, where no one can become irked or anxious
Always the happy music, telling us us to relax,
Forget the delays. Don't question "equipment malfunction" delays.
Straddle your obvious loneliness in a sea of strangers
The USO is available. The interfaith chapel down the hall.
Not that anyone goes there. Unless.

Airport terminals were once places of hello's and goodbye's.
Now we are cattle, prompted to relax
Before herded, no longer in control
Of left or right or up or down.
Seats forward, please.
Original illegible






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