Ode to Ceres

The bus terminal. Nine o’clock.
A wiry man
with a determined stride
and a smell of fried things
nods with absolute assurance.
He whistles to a friend,
another smelly one,
who pushes me onto a bus.
Not the front of the bus
or the side of the bus
or the back of the bus
or, indeed, anywhere near fresh air.
In the smelliest,
hottest,
darkest part of the bus
In minutes that creep,
infected by second hand karaoke
and last night’s insomnia
I wither. I shrivel slowly,
riddled with hangover.

Ah, praise be to timetables,
for they are all thrown away.
Some have even been used
to hold salt for hungry travellers,
devouring duck embryos.
Much of the embryonic fluid
embraces lovingly
my acute alcoholic poisoning.

In two hours there is a yell:
We Are Off!
Off ma’am, completely off!
Really? What a riot.
Oh, how lovely to be woken up
Just at the moment of bothersome sleep.
Asleep on this bus?
Hell no, what a silly thought indeed.

The bus winds its wild way
Through territory home to NPA
And broken vehicles the sorry prey
Of precision Pinoy driving skills.

Jesus.
LOOK OUT FOR THAT CORNER!
Whoops, I’m just a passenger.
Sometimes I forget
when I am thrown up the front of the bus
or throwing up at the front of the bus.
Airborne and heroic,
for a second or two.
Look mummy, I’m flying
and that nice man is putting corn in my face.

None for me thanks.
I had ten bags of peanuts for breakfast.
But perhaps you could tell me
When this lovely journey is already finishing?
Would it be tonight, or tomorrow,
At the mental home?
Or perhaps at my funeral?
No idea? Oh no, that’s okay.
Maybe we should all just pray.

God Bless Our Journey
proclaims our driver’s mirror.
I briefly permit myself the blessing
To consider the journey without god’s good grace.
My bruised rear is the very definition of Satan’s wrath.
Satan on Monday morning after a big weekend
On the piss
and I think there might be a team meeting
with the other branch from hell.

No, wait.
Could we be here?
Surely not.
No, wait we are. I recognize this place.
This is the same smell I smelt before.
And look, there’s the same pile of garbage from days of yore!
We’re not one hundred metres away, we’re so, so near!
Tap tap.
What’s that?
Oh no wait, we’ve stopped.
Three Pinoys extract themselves from the roof space.
We start again. Seventy metres when
Tap tap!
Again?
A balut seller climbs through the window,
Then climbs out.
On we roll.
Then we stop.
The driver has a quiet smoke,
buys a bottle of luke warm coke,
while five schoolchildren file out.
Twenty metres, ten, again
Tap tap!
WHAT THE FRICK HAS NO ONE HEARD OF A BLOODY BUS STOP!
Mortified by my shocking moan
I exeunt to walk the rest alone.

Are we in Australia yet?