Poems Written While Waiting For The R Train

I

I force myself to write 

To eloquently string words together 

So that they make sense 

Maybe even make them sound poetic 

Profound 

Some encapsulation of abstraction 

Of human truth 

II

I write as I think 

Something to fill in the gaps 

Something to keep my fingers moving 

It clearly lacks purpose 

Does one know what one wants to say 

Before one starts to write?

Or does one stumble into meaning

Does everything one writes need to mean something?

Does everything one writes mean to be read?

What if one wrote knowing it would not be read 

Would it be less deliberate, less polished?

Full of bad cliches, missing punctuations and spelling errors?

Full of sentences that seem to go nowhere?

Would it be raw and honest?

Or would we tell ourselves the same lies we tell others? 

Would we write at all? 

III

Houses and homes 

Is it really possible to have a house without a home 

Or a home without a house? 

Is one better than the other

Worse? 

I remember as a child 

I was told to be grateful 

To think of all the people 

Who weren’t as fortunate as me 

But for all our human tendencies 

That want to neatly compartmentalize 

And grade suffering 

Is one kind really better than another?

Do they need to be pitted against each other?

Is the boy tormented by bullies

Not suffering as much

As the homeless man

Starving on the sidewalk?

Obviously my mind supplies

But my heart says you don’t know 

We were all made differently 

All our sufferings are different 

And no suffering is better than the other