Projection

The trouble with writing poetry

on a bus

is not the limited, but distracting, conversation

between two teenage boys

(secretly wondering if they aren’t youths)

on my left.

 

‘Make an effort, lads,’

I half-want to say to them.

‘You might want to start

by substituting fuck for very

every once in a sentence.

It’s really fucking simple.’

 

It isn’t the lack of inspiration

which you might associate with a bus journey.

‘Oh, but that’s not very profound,

writing a poem about a bus journey.

Where’s all that poetic angst and suffering

and insight into the human condition?’

because all of that depends on how you read the poem.

 

It isn’t even the fact

that I’m mildly anxious

about missing my stop

because I have never travelled this route before.

‘Sorry I’m late. I was writing a poem on the bus

and I ended up in the wrong part of town.’

 

No, the trouble with writing a poem on a bus

is that they don’t provide tables

for me to lean on when I write.

This, and the vehicular movement

conspire to ensure that my poet’s script –

barely legible even when

I’m having one of my rare

‘Look, can we please try and be neat?’ days –

 

has traversed the bridge

taking it from merely illegible

to hilariously incoherent.

 

That, and the rather unfortunate confrontation

which is currently taking place

between the bus driver

and a non-paying customer,

from whom I learn

that the seemingly cheerful bus driver is,

in fact, ‘a cunt.’

 

A neat example of how

the accusations we throw at other people

are often better applied

to ourselves.