"schoolbus" poems
We were kids.
You shut the door on me in the pouring rain.
You had this wide-eyed, crazy grin on your face
all the time
amused with yourself
and that was enough.
How did I know
how to tell a boy I liked him?
I just knew your breath smelled like
listerine when you got on the schoolbus
in sleepy half dawn
You sat behind me and sometimes,
if I peeked my eye through the crack between
the seat and window, you'd smile
and share your headphones with me,
a simple song or two from The Postal Service.
On brave days, I'd scoot back to be closer
and breathe you in
in tentative girlish awe.
You laid your head down on my lap
to nap the rest of the trip
and I'd watch you, holding
my breath,
slowly playing
with your orange curls
spilling
through my fingers like sunlight.
Almost a decade later,
I've forgotten the schoolbus.
We're reunited with a group, eating
sushi, laughing until we cry
at my spicy face and the clumsy
way I can't hold chopsticks taunt.
But reaching past you, I brush
your hair on accident and stop short,
the sensation tingling my fingers,
remembering how
more than once I've
gazed at you in wonder.
Oct 27, 2011
Oct 27, 2011 at 4:52 PM UTC
*** 101
by Michael R. Burch
That day the late spring heat
steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus
crawling its way up the backwards slopes
of Nowheresville, North Carolina ...
Where we sat exhausted
from the day’s skulldrudgery
and the unexpected waves of muggy,
summer-like humidity ...
Giggly first graders sat two abreast
behind senior high students
sprouting their first sparse beards,
their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ...
The most unlikely coupling―
Lambert, 18, the only college prospect
on the varsity basketball team,
the proverbial talldarkhandsome
swashbuckling cocksman, grinning ...
Beside him, Wanda, 13,
bespectacled, in her primproper attire
and pigtails, staring up at him,
fawneyed, disbelieving ...
And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her,
as she twitched impaled on his finger
like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes,
I knew ...
that love is a forlorn enterprise,
that I would never understand it.
Keywords/Tags: first, love, *** lust, passion, desire, school, bus, foreplay, ********* odor, musk
Apr 27, 2020
Apr 27, 2020 at 4:29 AM UTC
Take me to the snow
monkeys in the hot springs
of northern Japan.
Let me hold one as she combs
the water by my back over
and over.
I’ll note each snowflake
that settles on her fur
and i’ll really
be––
Let me get lost
somewhere near ocean.
I want to ask the wandering albatross
where to go.
Maybe when the trees float unsuspended
I can sit atop a mountain goat and
finally stop thinking.
We'll watch the morning sun
clear the fog.
(from the time my mother dressed
me, my little legs drumming the
air. From the time I stepped on
to the yellow schoolbus
and waved to my parents
goodbye;) They knew that one
day, I’d learn to break out of my body
and fly into the starry night.
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 3:37 PM UTC
I loved the schoolbus.
I had friends in the front,
and friends in the back.
But sometimes when I climbed those steps,
I didn't want to have friends.
I didn't want to smile,
I didn't want to laugh.
I just wanted it quiet so
I sat in the middle sometimes,
right in between everything.
And that's where I met Vanessa,
right there in the middle of the bus.
She sat alone every day,
with her eyes always
cast upon the window
and what lay beyond it.
I noticed her right away
even though she was older
and a few grades ahead of me.
See she was seventeen, and much more
experienced than the fourteen-year-old me.
But I approached her anyway,
working my way into the seat
adjacent to her.
Eventually working up the *****
to actually say something.
We talked for a few weeks,
and she humored me.
Even when I went to sit in the back
and was loud and obnoxious, I would
catch her glancing.
She would look and sneer at me.
So when the day finally came
that she said my name
and told me to sit in her seat,
I dropped everything
and joined her.
Want to see something?
she asked, without so
much as a blink.
Sure, I mean, of course.
I replied, trying my best
not to sound too eager
She kept her eyes on me as
her hands lifted up her skirt,
one inch at a time showing me
more and more of her.
My eyes were locked on
her crotch, I could almost hear
the shutter clicking as I documented
the whole thing mentally.
But she stopped when she revealed
a crescent-shaped scab on her upper thigh.
It was shot through with red lines,
swollen and inflamed and
I swear that it moved and pulsed
right before my eyes.
I couldn't look away
as she picked the scab off
in one big piece, and I saw
a white caterpillar unfold from
her wound in a squelching
symphony of sickening sound
and roll it's way down
her leg, covered with blood and
leaving ***** streaks.
Then it hit the seat and I gasped
when she grabbed it before it could
crawl away and shoved the
macabre thing into her mouth,
still crawling,
killing it with her teeth.
I never sat with Vanessa again.
Apr 17, 2015
Apr 17, 2015 at 10:03 PM UTC
This twelve year old boy decides
to ****** the syllables and sounds.
Define leisure.
The crowd shutters at
The voice of the voiceless.
Static gazes shoot across the
graffiti living upon the
livingless.
Leisure just means fun.
This twelve year old boy studies
the maroon leaf hinged on a thread
of silk--
of beauty.
Strands of life occupy his mind
with ounces of doubt
and pints of disbelief;
For threads will break
and beauty will fail.
The buses leave in 2 minutes.
Hurry up!
This twelve year old boy waits
for the end of perseverance;
The burning sensation that crawls
along the inner thigh.
Long live the thread…
Find your partner for the nature walk.
This twelve year old boy
observes the confines of the schoolbus
for the remaining human scraps.
His eyes meet with Jason’s
Deep, silky hazel eyes.
He walks behind Jason while
pinching the edge of his hoodie.
Remember to be back in 10 minutes.
This twelve year old boy ventures into
the small crevice of the forest
in search of a place to call home.
Jason grins at the sight of
Squirrels scurrying through the falling
leaves and shifting sunlight.
Jason inquires,
What are you looking for?
I’m looking for leisure.
Jason couldn’t help but let out
this chuckle that causes bushes to
Shudder.
Start making your way back to the bus.
This twelve year old boy shakes
at the quickness of Jason’s turn.
This twelve year old boy stares at
the formulation of sweat on Jason’s forehead.
Jason drops his eyes onto his slightly pursed
lips and propels his head.
This twelve year old boy remembers
the perseverance of a leaf and feels the delicate,
fragile threads wrap around his body.
This twelve year old boy fears
the dangers of this exotic love.
The body of this twelve year old boy trembles as
Jason’s face grows closer and closer.
This twelve year old boy drops his eyelids
to relax every bone in his body.
This twelve year old boy lets go of the
aching apprehension. Jason locks his lips along
the face of this twelve year old boy to
extract the void out of the abyss living within.
Jason wouldn’t stop his extraction until the beating
of his heart matched with his.
May 1, 2017
May 1, 2017 at 9:35 AM UTC
I got my favorite motto from a little avacado
Green is good, brown is bad, the pit is hard to swallow
We can drown in bottles
The good Snows' always yellow
And my Molly's always coddled
Got a Tab at the bar so I went home and thought I dawdled
Woke up hulking in a schoolbus dropped the wheel and hit the throttle
they ask me why I am the way that I am, aristotle
I reply why the ***** the world have to be so monochrome and awful?
And we just lie to ourselves, that what we find in this hell
Makes all the suffering that we endure all worthwhile well
**** that
Before you kiill yourself
they say call me up
it's 1 800
No one gives give a ****
Jul 12, 2020
Jul 12, 2020 at 1:12 PM UTC