I am going on holiday for 2 weeks and my computer is going in to be seen
to. I dread losing some work and so I post this rough copy in order to
be able to recover it later, hopefully.
Nevertheless any comments would be welcome. The sketches are all of
fellow passengers on a regular morning bus when we get to travel for
only 20p. Known as the Wrinklies Express.



Monday's Bus.

The sameness of company
comfortable as old slippers.
The Wrinkly Express
lurching through a spring
that froths and flutes
down avenues of blossom.

 Des

Lauded and applauded,
of some standing
in upper echelons of the Lions,

he smiles and greets us
from under a Wisdom-snapped-neb cap
and over a lurid sneer of a tie

bedraggled as a field-dog's ear.
His luncheon meat sandwiches
and flask, rolled in  his mac.

He goes to join the ramblers "over Leeds someplace".
Nods and smiles, affable and knowing
as a bulldog in a TV ad, oh yes.



  Billy and wife

 mount the steps.

He, cherub-cheeked, pink, pert as a robin,
clutching a black-bound psalter
with lolloping dog-tongued bookmarks.
Ringing greetings are bestowed
upon the congregation of the bus.

She, raddled, rotund and rouged,
basks in the benison of his presence
glows in adoration,
beams through a snaggled fence of teeth,
moves to a separate pew.





  Gunner

Same dirty hat, greased and jaunty,
jammed on uncut, unkempt hair
that sprays in wisps, sprouts like privet.

The same sag-arsed trousers
crumpled in Andean folds over
the same perhaps-once-white trainers.

Always at the the same stop
for the same seat
on the same bus.

Behind glasses,
dim as an uncleaned aquarium,
dewy eyes swim through gloomy deeps.

Tattooed hand, self-inflicted once-upon-a- love,
where " Linda" grips and fondles the yellowing bone
-handled head of his stick,

Does he notice spring?
What music plays as he sways
to the waltz of gear and brake?

 Her at 48

tight prison of face tics
startled by a torn ticket
like a deer
hiding in a thorn thicket
anorak chained to chin
life locked out
self locked in.

 The Oriental Lady

 Short stride
 almond-eyed
 sallow skin
 cymbals thin
 seem
 to sneeze
 as she turns to watch
 strange hills that match
 her incongrous
 by-gum voice.



  Duggan.

Brown as ale,
hair white as the head on a pint of Guiness
face finely etched as a street map of Dublin,
jacket, a size too tight or body a size too big,
he shuffles to his place,
ticket clamped in the mallet of his fist,
oh, any seat will do,
apologies, copious as the Liffey,
strewn in his wake.