A Rushed Swipe Through History’s Turnstile
This is a poem I’m posting here more to keep the galleries I post to at semi consistent at least since I doubt many if any people here care too much about this. The Metrocard got discontinued in December of last year and I had something to say about that as a New Yorker. I wrote this back in August of the same year after struggling to find time to write before.
A Rushed Swipe Through History’s Turnstile
By: A.X. Bueno
Change is something that can be pretty hard to stop
Especially when it’s decided on by a city’s top
Top positions of power and for something small like this I doubt people fought hard
To protect something as basic as a metrocard
Personally I’m sad to see them go
As the machines are being replaced unevenly from borough to borough
They’re also being replaced before wintertime
Speeding up what should have been slower adjustment to being past their prime
So the metro card starts to become harder and harder to make last
When you can’t put more money on it and solely swiping your phone is so fast
When it can’t keep up and can’t fill it up it’s easier for it to become part of the past
Like the tokens that we stopped using before it
But personally I find that to be a fate unfit
For something that feels so quintessentially New York
But it’s also not something for which we can unstick that fork
Still no matter how good the replacement may or may not be
I don’t think the Metrocard should be replaced so fast and eagerly by the end of the year
I think it’s legacy shouldn’t be merely destined to pass beyond the turnstile of history
And instead should be allowed to just be