I like this a lot Arthur. It seems more relaxed, more at ease with its words
than many of yours (this seems fresh milk, not condensed!). And it's still
delightfully playful with its sounds (assonances and consonances and quirky
little, and large, rhythmical flows).
With one of them, tho, either the title - Oriental Lady - or the poem itself
doesn't seem the same as the rest... But the other cameos you give have more
life than the words... I mean I can now imagine them elsewhere too.


>From: arthur007 <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub : Bus
>Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 07:42:22 +0100
>
>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.






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