“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” ^

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~this one for Eliot York, who gave us a great gift - opportunity~

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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!”