Saturday 7 July 2012

Bus notes 9

        I know that drunk, lost
        in his racial slurs.
        He’s a friend of an almost friend.
The kid who’s just 
offered him a seat
        he calls with spittled lips a spade
        as if the word worked still
        and we’re in on it,
        white, black and all.
I watch this thin stretch of person
swinging on the handrail,
dressed down (on principle),
a hurt animal,
        and think about the Summer of Love.
        I’ve heard that’s all done now.
Outside, the sun is shining heartlessly.
It’s the Summer of Something Else.
        I’m getting off the bus
        in one stop’s time.

4 comments:

  1. yes, the summer of something else.

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  2. I intend to stay in for the duration and cultivate my non-tan. The trouble is, the "Something Else" won't be ignored.

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  3. The summer of Love was definitely a Great Maybe. Where have all the flowers gone wrong. The fallout is the hurt animals huddled in the shop doorways. They've begun building new cardboard fortifications around themselves every night, to keep off the rats. Far out has become far too close in.

    But I for one will miss the bus forever... I mean the bus notes. Please don't say they're gone for good, WB. Everything goes in cycles. Buses, love, cycles, notes. Something Else lasts forever.

    (By the by the fellow who said that on the bus would find his stop coming up very hard and fast, things are that touchy here.)

    The duration is good. The white man's tan is cancer in spades.

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  4. The service is still running, TC. I tell myself that's it and all of a sudden another one appears. There's at least a couple waiting at the terminus right now.

    You're right about that Great Maybe. And to have that sense of possibility again would be grand, even if we can't recover in any simple sense what's done.

    That chap was damn lucky himself. Birmingham has a huge Afro-Caribbean population. The affability of the lad he insulted had a lot to do with it.

    For all that talk about the Sun, it's done nothing but pour down the last few days. I couldn't go with anything but pasty-faced even if I wanted to.

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