~for Lalit Kumar~
Pandemic, retiring, no more bus riding,
alas, the inside insights are far, few, and
the spac/time contiunuum in between poems
and psalms has graduated from metered dashes
t o o l o n g d i s t a n c e r u n n i n g s, and
the social etiquette of the subterranean subway landscape
forbids making eye contact, (you looking at me??)
a un~delightful
poetry inhibitor!
And yet,
will draw my inspiration from the
holy imagined
city streets, rife with innundating
strivings, wriithings, out-loud-shoutings,
though
I dare to imagine that noise of the Cities of India,
whose buses I envison as a spicy potpourri,
a combo spices of a human tagine,
a multi-vegatable curried stew,
spicy, noisy, and lip
smacking noises
but whose inhabitants
bear and bare little compare
electric beheamoth hybrid buses of
three plus bendable carriage long length,
carrying all passengers of irratable disposition,
& only a minimalist passing resembalance, of
mealy mouths & closed ****** lips, trying to ignore the
**** wetness damp of a rainy and chilled spring temp
that demands winter coast still be employed and of
course overcook and overheat the already grumpy grumpuses
of everyone, regardless of age, creed, gender and age,
and all the other slice n' diced categorizations
of the human race(s)
here I shall quit this long winded apology
in all its minor grist and glory,
this just a **** proof of
my continued
existence,
and a dbt paid to
Lalit Kumar,
who asked impetuously
"Please sir,
may I have some more?"
and here be
your starter
dish
of un-sub-springlike weather
in a city bus here, with passengers
of a Western ilk
Apr 12, 2025
Apr 12, 2025 at 4:50 PM UTC
since I last
rode a bus,
no, poems aplenty
have poured and dripped
from ink-saturated fingers,
here there and everywhere,
disguised by many a nom de guerre
the bus riding infrequently,
as work no longer demands me,
I ride for the occasional occasion, when legs won’t
carry me the far away distances
they say violence in the city
is random, and just seems worse,
seemingly a newspaper creation,
but I know better, and random violence &
poetry inspiration do not walk or talk
hand in hand, not for the hands that write…
in every crack, lamppost,
festooned
with flyers for concerts years ago,
poems reached out to me, write, right?
I too am papered with memories of long-ago
city travels, picking up scenes & dreams
that became poems, instantaneously, scrambling,
to get home with them retained, untainted,
preserved with the freshness of city smells,
city swells, homeless, rowdies & oldies shuffling,
the interwoven of disparate desperate humans,
fodder once and now for Walt Whitman’s leaves,
each distinct needy for something else,
but for me,
just one city big view, a Cloister’s museum tapestry,
remade, rewoven anew every moment of every day
and a poem-rough tumbles from
without
&
within
,
Oct 24, 2023
Oct 24, 2023 at 8:55 AM UTC
at my stop,
but very few getting on,
even fewer getting off, all
on account nobody feels
like going anyplace anyway
I don’t mind,
like stretching out,
and the big picture
sized windows mine,
now all to myself, got
fantastic view of
empty streets
the bus drivers don’t
kick me off at the last
stop anymore, happy
for the company, even
though the drivers are
the sorriest sad sacks,
crying quietly under
the masks that don’t
hide all that much
Jul 10, 2020
Jul 10, 2020 at 12:12 AM UTC
**“for when the mind has no solution to the rough and tumbling lives,
lived in glass shackled confinement, the poet’s desperation equals theirs”
The Bus Poet Stop “The Glass Shackles” ^
<|>
~this one for Eliot York, who gave us a great gift - opportunity~
§§§
The mandated city buses are largely denuded of passengers,
so the drivers, peruse the enriched, enforced silenced life of the
streetscape, and as they pass, call-out a fisherman’s plaintive wailing,
“here we are, where are you, do we exist?” Too few nibble “I am!”
Bus Poet Stops, stumbles on an older writ, now seemingly prophetic,
once again, he is back, living in a glass shackled confinement,
his 16th floor perch, besmirched, the mirthless empty outside well matched by the isolation inside him, a new kind of shackling bereft.
For these glass shackles are not new, but different, the glass is poorly blown, cloudy, pockmarked with air bubbles entrapped, useless
for fresh breathing, many containing a question mark, some ask
what, others when/where shelter, all, harsh pleading tones, why me?
“For when the mind has no solution” poet wrote in twenty eighteen,
unaware that this predictive value would return to rent & render mean,
his composure, no longer a savior, now he weeps copiously for thee,
those that he, in prior life, came to save, now too, another faceless face.
no, no!
Your writing saves self, and a thousand more, you infiltrate, penetrate our conjoined quiet, giving name to each of our unsalted tears, no fear poems that make us say, Merry, Merry to us all; God bless us, every one! Bus Poet head-hung, shamed, pained, looks away, mask-covers-gratitude.
Rough and tumbling times, we discount ourselves blameless, but voices
say time for gifting varietals of solace mysterious, this! is your business!
words, instruct to touch, to transport us on a poet’s bus to Delirious,
enable arrival+survival to destiny’s destination, “for all, a good night!”
May 1, 2020
May 1, 2020 at 2:08 PM UTC
not much he reasons, resonating the question,
in the resounding places where both are congruent kept
we talk of lines all the time, line divisors of our
denominators and our numerators,
but truth and secrets are 1/1
so the rational number is always one indivisible whole,
with liberty for both,
when
the glass shackles^
be broken
but let us not dance around the marshmallow fire,
while watching clocks melt as our memory persists,
so secrets and truths have a rigorous solute/solution relationship,
yet, the dividing line melts over time and the answer
in all the poems that the body worked,
with experience, you can see the works becoming
the body solution blended,
undefined admixture, defined, refined, all just fine,
for the microscopic difference is in the eye of the beholder
but requires breaking
the glass shackles^
for
one will enchain
one will set you free
when their meld is melted
Apr 27, 2019
Apr 27, 2019 at 9:37 AM UTC
spring planting, spring harvesting, spring garlic
One of the great joys of having a job in agriculture
is to think days, weeks, even months ahead,
One of the great joys of having a job in poetry,
like a fireman, a patient planter of love,
you wait to be called,
then becoming by being,
part of an all consuming burning
come spring, take advantage of the cool, wet weather of spring
to put in multiple crops of peas and lettuce, also a great time
to get your perennial vegetables,
like asparagus and rhubarb, started
the planting cycle is not an either/or,
come harvest thy labored fruits,
nine crops to harvest come March,
kale, pick leaves as needed,
leeks, best left in the ground
and harvested as needed,
parsnips, purple sprouting broccoli,
rhubarb, spring cabbage, spring cauliflower,
and of course, my personal fav,
Spring Garlic
Garlic, like like love, is generally planted in the fall,
before the frost and harvested the following late summer.
But from March to May,
once the ground has truly thawed,
the young lover plants, spring garlic or green garlic,
can be harvested.
it’s a long bus ride to Western Canada
where the garlic spring has come,
ain’t complaining lots of time to write foolishness
and plant a few good bus poems in northern ontario
and even michigan,
the window slides, and the seeds scattered,
but at every bus poet stop,
those that need it,
planted many inches deep
April 2 naught how I wish I was nineteen again
Apr 12, 2019
Apr 12, 2019 at 4:02 PM UTC
“eye now know
the how, when, where and the-why,
my Eyes compose this elegy
memories of past and present...
blending into memories of future happenstance”
what is chosen is believed
though the choices are presented -
I choose among the sacrificial burnt offerings
this, my will is free
though the path is circumscribed, ordained
the bus has a route it follows,
but the speed and timing governed by
chances made by me
and you
me and random things spliced.and sundered
get on me
get off me
get
Sep 22, 2018
Sep 22, 2018 at 2:01 PM UTC
“”I could hardly accuse George Washington of lacking vision for the country he helped found. But in 1790, he wrote a letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I., in which he offered this blessing: “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” With this friendship, America has done much better than that.””
Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 2:19 PM UTC
~for those who will read this and weep~
*the quiet ones,
the silent Job ones,
who quote not from the
Book of Lamentations,
but author their own,
based on-the-job experience
localized versions of cryptic elegiacs
accepting the wooden crosses borne,
stepping up to the
unrequested unforeseen,
then buried under, burnt alive,
yet never relieved by dying,
nailed by words, stronger than iron,
promises sworn, promises kept
with no ending date relief,
promises by and to themselves,
but not for themselves!*
*the wearers of crystal glass shackles,
adorned with decorative locks for which
no key did the maker make,
nor any divine creator
dare conceive an early release,
never no escape contemplated,
for the lock human, unrepentant unbreakable,
a decorative useless metaphor gesture,
a blunt “life ***** advertisement
I compose amidst a
bus pond of mismatched city folk,
a tapestry of ages colors and differing views on god/no god,
none would believe that as the bus sways me,
it’s in rhythm to holy choral music,
hundreds year old,
divinity masses and motets worships,
where one human can hide temporarily
a safe house,
to calm his questioning relentless
from the horrors of no answers,
for when the mind has no solution
to the rough and tumbling lives,
lived in glass shackled confinement,
the poets desperation equals theirs*
*summon eagles to transport these imprisoned,
but the shackled refuse,
I come to them but they wave me off,
I go crazy for once I was enslaved,
thirty years war that left devastation,
from which so many poems created
so I speak with heightened regard
of one who planned futures for others where his
non-existence was a founding father (ha!)*
*but the day came and
I was released by my own inactions,
but means nothing until a way to
away found
to release the yet bound early*
got a couch, airline miles, hundred dollars
in my pocket and an unrelenting need
to save them, a consumption disease,
the glass shackled, at ease,
won’t rest till all are freed
this my creed
no one left behind
these cyber words do not mock
for they are unbounded, set free,
when
the flesh connects and the needs of the flesh
are stronger for they are in heart conceived
Jun 23, 2018
Jun 23, 2018 at 5:45 PM UTC
the bus poets
we are the modern day chimney sweeps,
the ***** black faced coal miners of the city,
digging up its grit, toasted with its spit,
the gone and forgotten elevator operators,
the anonymous substitutable,
still yet glimpsed occasionally,
grunts of urbanity
provoking a surprised
whaddya know!
once like the bison and the buffalo,
we were thousands,
word workers roaming the cities,
the intercity rural routes and the lithe greyhounds
across the land of the brave,
free in ways the
founders wanted us to be
us, the stubs and stuff,
harder working poor and lower cases
we were the bus poets,
sitting always in the back of the bus,
where the engines growls loudest,
seated in the - the most overheated
in winter time, so much so
we nearly disrobed,
and then come the summer,
we were blasted with a joking
hot reverie from the vents,
but vent, no, we did not!
no - we wrote and wrote of all we heard,
passion overheated by currents within and without,
recording and ordering the
snatches and the soliloquies of the passengers,
into poem swatches;
the goings on passing by,
the overheard histories,
glimpsed in milliseconds, eternity preserved,
inscribed in a cheap blue lined five & dime notebook,
for all eternity what the eyes
sighed and saw
books ever passed
onto the next generation in boxes from the supermarket,
attic labeled, then forgotten beside the outgrown toys
with our names writ indelible with the magic of
black markers
if you stumble upon a breathing scripter,
let them be, just observe,
as they, you,
these movers and bus shakers,
as they, observe you
tell your children,
you knew one in your youth,
then take them to the attic
retrieve your mother's and father's,
teach your children
how to read, how to see,
the ways of their forefathers,
the forsaken,
the bus poets.
Sep 29, 2017
Sep 29, 2017 at 7:53 AM UTC