Thursday, April 25, 2013

Waiting for the bus poem #2

I sit on a bench, 
near the busy intersection of Chapman and State College,
waiting for the bus.
I try to count the cars as they pass,
but there are too many, hundreds,
and they move too fast.

There are no bike lanes here.

The other six people who
wait with me are minorities.

I sit and breathe in carbon monoxide,
and write.

And in the distance,
a brown haze of sky.

The bus arrives 
and it is packed, 
standing room only,
with minorities,
men and women and children.

Author here,
as in Jesse La Tour,
the guy putting pen to paper.
I feel the need to interject here,
for a moment,
some of my anxieties
as a writer.

I'm afraid people will
think this is a "liberal" poem
because it deals with
pollution and minorities.

But, truthfully, it is not.
Fear not, I have no political intentions.

I wrote these words as I was
actually waiting for 
a real bus, near 
a real busy intersection, with
real cars emitting
real carbon monoxide which I was 
really breathing into
my real lungs and the sky was
really brown in the distance and the bus was
really filled with
real minorities.

And all I wanted to do, poem-wise, was to
write down that real experience I had today
in Fullerton, California
on April 26th, 2013
between approximately
2:23 and 2:54pm
at the bus stop
near the corner of Chapman and State College.

I mean, okay, 
the experience does 
raise two or three questions like:

1.) What's the deal with all the cars?
2.) What does that brown haze mean?
3.) Why is the bus packed with minorities?

But, again, I just wrote down what I saw.
If this poem makes you think
about politics, well,
that's your deal.


I got this photo from google images, so it could be fake.
But the poem is real, and the experience.