A handfull of it
Wont buy a pint
Wether its milk
Or beer, even a coffee
Black or flat white.
A handfull of it
May jingle and clank
Wont buy a chunk of wood,
Not even bus fare
Certainly not a full plank.
A handfull of change
Cant help you arrange
A taxi ride to take you home
Change can be many things
wont buy, a meaty stew bone.
So keep the change held tight
Dont make a change in the night
You wont need to change at all
Maybe youl need to just sit and see
That changes not needed effect you and me
HOMELESS
Pale palms spread ! Lie flat, damp on a beer mat
lip stained pint glass, bubbles rising,carbon gas.
Puddle, pooled, red-eyed perspective, insulin injected.
Life lives in a toilet visit, dripped, stained, unzipped.
Crabbed-walked, twisted-talked, bent legged kneeling
urine smell immune, numb, no feeling.
Blurred haze across table strewn, stool, chair maze
falling body held in a strangers grasp, a sick rasp.
Limp-mouthed words fall out, joined in spit
short breath from Hell and split trousers smell .
Cold gutters await, dark, alone late
and no home, not there ! No care.
Please bus fare ?
I have seen yet another miracle under the sun,
An eastern girl.
A firefly that has brought light to my pitiable living....
Poetry like music is just another description of art a painter never had the words to say out loud,
But in my case this is what happens when charisma plies against literature.....
What if I told you my wrist is part of the arms that planted the Boughs of the forbidden fruit?
And in my reveries,I write lustful poems like it's an addiction,
Sin after sin.
Or perhaps I write of love knowing I shall only taste it on stanzas and metaphors?
It's this type of poems that feel like they were written for me....
But today I'm a lucky man,
For there's a lass I wish to say my love to, love of it's purest form,
Stand on mount Everest and shout her name for millennials like I'm on salary to do so,
I'm not much of affectionate behavior
But for simplicities sake....let me just say
I want go on lavender candle dinners,hitch eyes until she's comfortable enough to talk about her insecurities,
And if I was to die before her
Bring me kwachas and ngwes...for I will need bus fare to find my way back to her, only rapture will do us apart.
Sometimes we pay double extra
During inflation
Price rise in cooking oil
It has been a long time
We're eating waste oil
Increment in electric bills
Already suffering from
An extreme hot day
Price rise in cars
MCO lingers
We're unable to change cars
Price rise in household electrical appliances
Have to buy an expensive
All-purpose cooker
Price rise in worshipping supplies
Have to ask for God's forgiveness
Rise in bus fare
Pity the children
Free education but burdened transport fare
Price rise in chicken eggs
Have to use less tasty duck's eggs
Price rise in farm fresh drinks
All along no confidence
Price rise in beers
Not all the people's favourite
Price rise in sugar
Saccharin is already widely used
Price rise in bread and mee
Have to change to
Less tasty rice buns and meehoon
Besides inflation and tax increase
We do pay double extra
For people's carelessness
Ignorance
And greeds
All finally will result in
An eternal suffering
They could be anywhere
Greased on my bus fare. Any Tom Dick or Jack and Solitaire
On every bit of bittie bit, on any drop of there.
They're everywhere in ambush
On every pull you push. Each panicked ceramic royal flush
Pirates hide, ride crazy-eyed, with itch-sticky triggers to crush.
And anything I breathe
Down the red throat of my sleeve. The miasma mere clean teeth can't cleave
Goes in out in out freaked out out, so every grin and weep's knot-weaved
And my besiegement
Unrelieved.
Peace breezy night skies that fills the air. Working night shift scrambling through your pockets looking for bus fare. The moon comes out and gives a warning. Now it’s setting behind the clouds because here comes morning. Breaking news, the coronavirus landed from a airplane, an invisible enemy now sitting on the runway. Few weeks later the world is now in cages. This all change rapidly after the night before quarantine.
Your day wasn't bad enough.
You had to work late,
on a job with no
time and half for overtime.
On your way home,
waiting for the bus.
Only to be held up
by two members
of Thugs-R-us.
There's never a Cop around
when you need one.
They wave a gun
in your face.
Knowing you won’t make a fuss.
You said look man!
You must be practicing,
because I’m broke as hell.
They laughed and took
Your cellphone, wallet
and bus fare as well.
But they weren’t through
They took your over coat too.
They were laughing
As it began snowing.
Then they got on your bus.
And only because it’s Xmas season,
they rob everybody on the bus.
They left you standing there
in the freezing cold.
You saw the whole thing
and they didn’t care.
Because this didn’t really happen.
Only because
you picked this day,
to called in sick.
Aware, armchair
Cross hair, forebear.
Compare Despair,
Frontiere-Frontier,
~
Beware, forbear
My prayer.
Childcare, Bus fare
Healthcare, Home-care
~
My prayer
Mankind not kind
Not there, not here
Compare Despair,
~
Frontiere-Frontier,
Beware, forbear
My prayer.
8/30/19
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr.© 2019
I've invested too much time
Into people I thought were genuine
It's baffling
How many people you know
You think have your back
But actually don't
When you need me there
I show up
When I need you
It's you know I would but
I've come to learn
I ain't the only thing desyroying me
The other part of it is misplaced loyalty
It's crazy to me
How you could treat people like royalty
But when I'm in a hole
They can't even throw a rope to me
That's some bull and bull is bull
Even if it smells like potpourri
Some people just don't care
They'll throw you under the bus
After you give them their bus fare
I'm good enough to help you out
When no one would
But when I need you to vouch for me
It's a shoulder shrug
Chances Seemed To Be Pretty Fair
Chances seemed to me to be pretty fair,
When London's city was found to be fair,
Was thinking,
Hopes sinking;
Price had been high for their bus fare.
Jim Horn
We school friends met
After five decades
One came by air
One by car via
One motorcycle share
One by public bus fare
We school friends met
After five decades!
My Kingdom
For a verse
Worthy of note
A poignant stanza
Recited before a willing audience
My Kingdom
For the words
Etched on an unmarked grave
Moss won't grow over
Because it's visited
Time to time
Read chapter and verse
As it nurses the soul
Of the lost dead poet's
Who congregate at midnight
Feasting on the shards of fame
That never came calling
Beset rather by Crippling writers depression
Dead before deciphering the lesson
My kingdom
I tried
But cold and wet
Looking for a phone box for shelter
In search of finery
I sink blessed without even a coin
My damp hand clenched into a pocket full of hole's
For bus fare home
My kingdom
For a happy end
As I ride this inconsistent city bus at 4:22 not 4:15; I realize that I am the miscreant among people who simply are traveling home. Clearly the people on this bus should be looking at ME as the dirty vagrant begging for bus fare. They should be looking at ME with despondent judgment. I should be looked at with a disdainful glance; for my intelligence is clearly questionable.
I have turned into the crazy guy talking to himself at the bus stop. Cursing at the bus for being 4 minutes late. Public transportation is filled with people who are riding for convenience. People who don't want to pay for parking as they are dropped off at their parked cars. People who live in the inner city with no other choice but to ride the bus. I ride because of stupid choices that have landed me here. I am the minority. The anomaly. I am the person one shakes their head at, thinking, what an idiot. Can I not blame society or my childhood? Can I not envy the "normal" people driving with freedom blowing in their hair? I have grown envious of the mundane. Is there no sympathy for morons anymore?
The magnificent sun is shining bright
Flooding the natural earth with white light
My emotions are immersed in anger
My strength is usurped by pangs of hunger
I think of years of economic boom
While I am leaning over an old broom
Right in the middle of the room that I sweep
I strive to put more efforts not to weep
Digestion systems in the stomach grind
Prompting signals of despair in my mind
I think to leave the club of sun-seekers
As I take turns between sweeping and breaks
I hear the highly screeching sound of brakes
As the bus driver brings it to a halt
Near the beer hall that sells the beer of malt
I decide to make short rhymes in rumbles
As I decide to do no more grumbles
Because on the table that will put no bread
But I have great strength of a thoroughbred
To carry me through the longest thoroughfare
Because I have no pennies for bus fare
But I have to follow the job-seekers
steely-eyed bunny wabbits
she smells like perfumed soaps and spray paints
i want parts of her reality in unnatural ways
steely-eyed bunny wabbits couldn't be more bold
as she is traipsing round the backstreets at a quarter to three
with a dogeared copy of catcher in the rye
just wants to be heard
just wants somebody to know how it feels
she writes it all out longhand on college ruled paper
a diary of an unkempt heart
her youthful rebel head filled with strong dreams
gonna make a difference
gonna get heard
so she stuffs all her worldly possessions
into a beat up backpack
long with bus fare and snacks
gonna find us some steely eyed bunny wabbits
and wrestle bright futures and rainy days from them
gonna get our fare share
this is why she is special to me
as she chases butterfly's in army boots
as she the navigates lovely night
(reference to: "the catcher in the rye" 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger)
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