the American fingerprint

Got back to Philly from a weekend of fun and confusion about 45 minutes ago. I'm all about drinking myself to sleep, ignoring both my plague of thoughts and second thoughts, ignorant of the unpacked bags sitting at the foot of my bed. How can I care about laundry and leaking shampoo bottles (I could smell it on the train tonight) when so much has happened and I haven't had a second to think about any of it.

Friday.
30th Street Station, Philadelphia to North Philadelphia, where I got off the train because I was having an anxiety attack. I couldn't breathe, my hands hurt, and the people sitting behind me were talking so loudly. so there. I'm as f'd up as the rest of you. I sat at the N. Philly platform for about an hour before another Trenton-bound train came by. It was a little scary when the few other people waiting with me got on the next train and I was left waiting alone with an old man with unfocused eyes. I almost got mugged. Really.

I can't do the play by play for the rest of it... I went to New York. There's no play by play for New York Fucking City (a shirt we saw there). Instead:

the American fingerprint

When someone told me, when
I was very young
no two people
have the same fingerprint,
I was dazed by the concept
but I figured
it made sense, it was
mathematically possible.

Now
I know people across
the land, and
I realized we all
have the same thoughts,
fears and feelings.

We all wear the same clothes
walk the same
streets, the same cracked sidewalks
Push the same carts and curse
the same traffic lights.

We all listen and take
the same drugs,
see with the same
electrical processes.
Watch the same TV
through the same
electrical lines.

We all have
the same names.

I've longed to believe that
America is not homogenous.
But it's all the same
trees and domed
state and county capitols
the same fountains
and brick buildings,
crumbling at the same time.

Maybe I believed
that people with
their unique skin
would build differently,
with different materials.

Maybe I believed
that I'd get off
a plane, the same
I fly everywhere,
and find a brand
new land with new colors,
a new way
to shake hands,
or to ask for tea
with lemon.

Maybe I expected
to find a place
without lemons.

The only thing that
ever changes, though:
the grooved pattern
worn into the physical
world, with
our singular fingerprints.