Brain spotting

They thumb away
swipes and strokes
lost in their phones and tablets.

Giant headphones weigh down their skulls,
drowning thoughts in stacatto procution
it leaks out,
filling the carriage.

Two chaps gabble about yesterdays journey;
how a passenger who could not wait,
relieved himself in a plastic bottle.

This, and other things we do not care to hear, early in the day
the school kids run jokes
oblivious these good times will become an echo
sorely missed.

Across,
A man with hair cropped low
chest pumped up in his uniform
Cherrished stripes on his arm.

Under which pretense does he wash off the blood?

Does he still doubt...
or have his ghosts been crushed?

The watcher
watched as he watches
fingertips on his cheek bone
prickly chin resting in his palm.

Eyes glazed
as the mind is filled with the frivolous.

I sit and judge them so
though I don't walk in their boots.
I see parts of me in them.
Never a dull commute.