Bus note 34

Remembered woman
two seats in front
reads her large pink Christ Triumphant book
        with thin nose set
        in powderwhite, describable face
        making for a near perfection.
        Across from her
        structure, her gleam,
Mother makes her boy's very dark hair unruly;
forget time and weather,
reasons and others, signals.
        They all leave the bus two stops
        before I do. Almost alone now.
Black hair. White face. Pink book.
My dry red hands.

At the Theological College

A note on the mid week posts

In future, I'll be alternating the poetry with photographs on a Wednesday. This will allow me to give more time to the words as well as fulfill my remit as one who does things with pictures.

Bus note 33

Morning darkness.
        I'm making myself write this.
The bus at speed.
        Eczema lets me know I'm here.
Still the fuzz from sleeplessness won't stop.
        Sawn off evergreen branches
        brutish in less than half light.
This is the opening dry scene
before a day of rain,
        a day of labour (paid)
        doing the caring thing.
How does anyone work
the social miracle these days?

From New Street to Euston

       Grey surfaces take up a lot of here

          Each clean fuselage lifts up
      above dead Warks scenery

            Shimmer then, white aluminium shell

  cloud drapes folding in and out

               energy noises against grass wildness
                    high up lights dry against soft air

          A shiver       Illegible rabbit faces are
                   near then gone

   Newbuild hamlets are doing
      pastel dream Victorian
                     someway down

         Canley is next now almost becoming Coventry

    gold
    gold and pink stripes
    gold dying off

  I like my new red jumper's heat

           In the seat opposite
         girl unknots her hair
              her attention inattention
            She's not here

         black smoke above conifers holding
               tyre stacks working all about
             a pile of fire

        poplar trees in the raw, picture rhyming

                       flat nowhere as such
                   with scrub clusters showing up      just

        with the odd train smudge
        going out for miles
               

Bus note 32

To myself out loud,
walking down the aisle:
"I am a ghost".
        The phrase repeated;
        compulsion.
        Tired in bad light.
There's torn newspaper everywhere.
        A young Staffy trembles
        beneath the fold-down seat
of a well dressed girl
with blue-black beret
above an emptied face.
        Some stupid conversation
        about free and fair trade
        carries from two seats behind.
Then two young girls come on
speaking a form of French. L'Afrique.
        A little tentative, taking seats
        a small way apart as they talk,
their faces become
those of friends slowly.
        Imagined: thin green ribbon
        cats-cradling them.
Make it hold for a long time.



     

Bus notes in Oakland

Yesterday, Tom Clark posted another of the bus notes series on his blog. It is a burning centre of the poetical universe. Go and look.

Our Mansion

Falling to pieces house
sodden under here    sponge soft there
wormed through    beetles
are rooting about

cracked green leaf glass pane
dark lead edges
clear panes with thin thread broken corners

A soft arch with
the terracotta shifting

A picture slipping

Walls with dirty thumb prints
they're pictures too  
trace fields

Old French windows shadowed with
berberis breathing thorned
pressing on to near    inside like a person
wantoning wanting    to finger musty gathered
parings letter scraps    flaked befores

Not quite there though
dirty yellow flowered
ragged agéd

thinned sap shrub
not a person yet

What is there there?

There's only our lacework (delicate
and ignorant) of unnecessary turns
to look
down on
for so long

Bus note 31

        Shining Sun before heavy rain later.
A little boy points at dark holly
that scratches waiting air over
the perimeter walls of the tennis club.
        The high rises, the Cricket Towers,
        are freshly painted and almost charming
while over the leafless-tree-filled park
the Sun gets smudged.
        Put a thumb over faded light
        to finish it; be a giant now.
Today I could give up kindness
and smiling and settle down
into that one still crystal heart valve
and be sharp and hard if I wanted to.
        If I wanted to, I would.

The Get Up

      want to be
            uncivilised

with dull sky Summer late morning
                crows at yellowgreen verges

   piss in a bottle
         then pour out
       at driving speed
                  human brine

Well, no-one there now
             at the levers.

               hangers-on people about
           from before stick people
       to pretend away

Is it a mistaken thing, this bad action
                                          lump of self?

               That what won't be shifted

   stickiness
   remindering
       
                hand-squeezed figurine

                uncleanness    

            a warm mist halo
                     all around

             species made up
   of small or insignificant hurts

           And yet here's a sparkling
      evental fadeout and gap with Sun in.

Still. And still, wetness
                    at that point;
    glistening overcoat.

        the victory cape I got given for
             wearing out

You write in condensation:
              we are
             almost scum
               today
            but not.

Bus note 30

The girl at the stop said
you can take this one too.
        Bus filled with boys
        of Solihull School, blazered,
expletives (ours, our language) thrown out
with such class, tidied-up violence
staining seat fabric. Bad air pallor is here.
        They're doing their long divisions -
the part: delicate boy with guitar,
a whitened, unafraid and hurt face,
        from the whole: fuckload of well-heeled cattle
        everywhere loudly, the inheritors
        of more than enough and more.
Motto: Perseverantia.
They do go on and on.