Going nowhere

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning.

(Mockingbird Wish Me Luck, "Those Sons of Bitches", C. Bukowski)

The doors open, and I'm shoved in along with everyone else and by everyone else. The metallic voice announces where we are and where we're going - as if it really knew. 

I look around me, wondering what all of us are thinking. What worries us, and what crosses our minds so early in the morning. I wonder if we think at all.

I get violently elbowed in the back - a huge woman, who doesn't even look back. I shrug, and try to disappear in the crowd. I don't wanna be seen, heard or noticed in any sort of way. I hate crowds, they make me feel lonely, like I'm at war.

I don't wanna be touched either, but that's a much harder task to accomplish. Thousands of hands touch mine as they all slide either up or down the pole, grabbing it desperately - as though it were their only salvation. As though it were the only safe port, and we were all drowning. 

Perhaps we are.

I look at a hand right in front of me, and then its arm, shoulder, chest, neck, face, hair, feet, my feet, my own self again. I see other hands, other chests, other faces, other feet. They're alll the same, despite their trying to be so unique.

Some of them are tall and unbelievably fat, with breasts drooping over their bellies, bellies drooping over crotches, crotches drooping over nothing, and their clothes don't manage to cover it all. All that saggy skin, and I'm forced to look at it.

Others are incredibly thin, it's like there's too little skin for too many pointy bones, and their clothes hang loosely on them. Like new clothes on a hanger at the store. 

Some wear thick glasses, while others don't - even though they visibly squint in order to see anything.
And I think to myself "what an appalling world." Our only beauty resides in our being pathetic.
We never did stand a chance, did we? We get on that thing, and we don't even know where we're going.
And the doors closed.