Sunday Mini-challenge: Routines, smeared by orange juice

Hi Toads & Visitors to The Garden !  This is Grace for your Sunday's prompt for the month of April.    This week has been different for me as I started Monday on my new job (but with the same company) in downtown Toronto City.   This meant that I have been commuting via subway, instead of driving to the office.   I take the same route & station but with the volume of commuters, I always see different people of all kinds and hear different musicians at the platforms.  In the morning, I observe that people have their "routines" - read the papers, listen to music, solve puzzles, drink coffee, while waiting for metal doors to chime & announce their destination.  "Please stand clear of the doors" refrains at every stop.      

Picture Credit by Grace

By the 4th morning, I was "zoning out" and almost missed my station's arrival.   What was initially an interesting train ride for me is now turning into "sleeping zone".  This was precisely the reason why I changed job assignments - because I was very comfortable with my prior job that it became a routine.   We have routines that we stick to everyday from household chores to buying groceries to preparing meals to scheduling our time. What is your routine?   

The Morning Routine

BY MARK O'BRIEN

I tell my attendants,

Right there,

When they rub me where it itches.

They rub for a few seconds, then move on,

There’s so much of it to wash,

“It” being me, a former person,

Now something that must be washed every day

In so little time.

Fifty minutes outside my breathing machine,

And all I can do is stare

As my breath recedes like the woman

Who would not love me.

It’s almost over,

I say over and over to myself

As soon as the machine is turned off.

An idiotic mantra perhaps,

But it helps when the ache descends into my eyes

And my words quit coming out right.

Left hand, I say.

Right foot? the attendant says, guessing.

I begin to fantasize about gusts of air

Rushing down my windpipe with hurricane force.

Garish and impossible, they’re respiratory porn.

My re-entry is stalled

By the attendant straightening a sheet

That no one will see.

Enraged, I squeeze my eyes closed.

Christ.

“What?”

Never mind.

Once back in and turned on,

I cough violently and with conviction.

Shocked by the force of the inrushing air,

I feel my lungs expand like birthday balloons,

My terror-flattened mind pops up into 3-D,

As I return to the land of breathing.

 

 Painting by Van der Neer

Clear Night

BY CHARLES WRIGHT

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.

Moon-fingers lay down their same routine

On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.

Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.

I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.

I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.   

I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says “What?” to me.

And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.

And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.   

And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

~0~0~0~0~

Our challenge is to write about a routine, something which we do or observe in others or what we observe in our surroundings, in a non-routine way.  Some suggestions are:  an unexpected twist or ending, writing from different  point of view, or use of synesthesia. Please write a new poem or prose poem and post it with Mr. Linky.   Kindly visit your fellow writers too.   

I look forward to reading your work ~  Happy Sunday ~ 

Grace (aka Heaven)