Vulgarity

Sic Transit Gloria Vulgus

I screech up to the stopped bus sweaty,
(8 miles behind me
and one minute to spare)
lever down the bus' bike rack,
grab the water bottle,
wipe my forehead,
load the bike,
take off the helmet and
hop on the bus
grinning a mile wide.

I flash my monthly pass,
survey the folks,
find a seat that affords
a vantage point of my bike
and settle in for the
45 minute ride to
8 hours work
with human blood.

My recent DUI
has necessitated the
use of mass transit.

But, this is a return.

Pop sold his car when I
was in 1st or 2nd grade.
We biked and bused and walked
to work, school and market.

The first couple years
after college I commuted.

The crude smells come back to me,
men and women just off work,
waitresses, construction workers, maids,
an unstable appearing woman
with a companion dog
weeps loudly on her cell-phone-
people look away,
or reassure her weakly.

My world's gone urban again,
Spanish phrases float and fall,
a profusion of black people,
Walkmen are plugged in,
books are opened,
glances are avoided,
the homeless arrange and rearrange
a stinking assortment of plastic bags.

The world warped ostent
of air brushed boobs,
glossy lips and
super- svelte
cigarette smokers
populates the bus stop ads.

It's Narcissism-
this dopey love
of the reflected,
depth lost on the
shifty surfaces of things,
a debased want of original light.

A perhaps gift-
this glimpse into my origins
via State ordered
punitive inconvenience.

Writing poetry on the bus
feels conspicious,
always made me self-conscious,
a flight, of sorts,
from the immediate.

So, generally, I don't.

After all, there's something to it.

That is, the reflexive recoil
away from a world refined
until cut-off from the
primal urge and wrestle
of its dank roots
in the ripe, dark earth.

The way opera is made fun of
in bars with Schlitz on tap.

Words approach from within,
congeal and seperate themselves,
making unsteady progress
toward a conclusive unknown.

Always this hierarchy,
The delicate built upon
the durability of the lower-

nameless strong backs
shouldering the load,

sound, syllable, sentence-

rungs up and down.

The integration of the simple
into an over-arching,
consuming complexity.

Molecules (made of atoms)
ordered to and fro
by most monarchical DNA.

Someone else
empties the Kings chamberpot,
lances his boils, shoes his horse,
smiths his sword,
carves and crafts his throne,
prepares and serves his meals.

And so familiarity with the origin
has, over time, come to be
considered indelicate.
If one is
in direct contact with life,
one is dirtied, sullied, rendered
unfit as company for those
who've achieved that
most desired,most revered state:
the ability to live
life without effort.

Reality, apparently too real,
we evade the actual.

The bus pulls up to my stop,
I review the situation:
medical technologist,
stigmatized status
as a DUI arrestee,
20 mile midnite bike ride home,
the trebled commute time,
probation, risk pool insurance...

ad absurdum.

I realize that I have come
to contact again with distances.

I know what a mile is.

My legs and lungs know.

I curse because
I come from there;
where people still work
in contact with life,
with the earth, with blood and bodies;
where the sweetness of limbs
is worn lightly brushed
by the ocean's tang;
where advertising is
a known charlatan.

I sing because
I come from there;
where people drown
their sorrows in drink,
shout and fight and
still laugh about it after.

That last, so necessary:
the after-laughter.

I think,
"Mine's the grace that lights
the guttersnipe's grin"
as I dismount and undo my bike.

I smile, say " Fuck it,"
and go to work with life's-blood.

Carlos Conrad Jan 2005