ㅁ 10 ways of looking @ a city bus (after W. Stevens which I just was reading) 1. A boy is kissed by his girl @ a bus stop on Figueroa St. By the taco stand. A bus pulls up. And struggles away in a cloud of exhaust. 2. A child watches the red & yellow bus, all angular, be-wheeled giant, irrelevant to his life He watches from the window. 3. Rural, inter-city county bus, bound for the university A column of eucalyptus trees flips past College students look out at the lumber stacked in rows 4. 11 pm on Washington Blvd. A man waits, stomping to stay warm Almost dancing on the icy sidewalk The 16A doesn't come. 5. Two yellow and brown buses careen down Avenida Insurgentes @ 2 am their drivers are racing. The passengers doze, or are drunk. 6. The newspaper headline says the buses are overcrowded. The state orders the transit authority to buy more buses one man asks "Where's the money going to come from?" 7. An old woman clambers onto a bus, Somewhere along 6th Avenue - the 50's, I think. An impatient young man flicks his burning cigarette into the gutter And reaches for the handrail to climb aboard. 8. Somewhere near St.-Germaine-des-Pres a bus disgourges its passengers The rich, intoxicating smell of diesel fumes Still makes me think of Paris in January. 9. Accelarating passionately the rural bus swings into opposing traffic To pass a donkey cart An old woman who boarded @ the mercado hugs her chicken protectively. 10. Sgt. Jones was impressed, when I knew which bus to board - I decifered the hangul. We went to the modern art museum South of Seoul, amid luxuriant green trees.
– a free-form poem from my past. This poem was written April 18, 1999, in a paper journal, and transcribed under that date to this blog in 2013.
