Voices on the Bus

VOICES ON THE BUS
train, subway, sidewalk and
in my head

by Anthony Buccino

Verse  about commuting in Northern New Jersey.

Feel the rhythm of the rails as you travel the last days of the Newark City Subway, or the PATH, and be relieved you are not present to hear the Preacher Man or Mr. Tourette's but do listen for the noise above the hum of the wheels and turn your ear to the voices on the bus, train or standing nearby on the platform.

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PREACHER MAN

H is for almost home!
Down three flights of stairs to the NCS Light Rail.
A car is pulling in. I grab a seat and then see him.
“Brudders and sisters,” the Preacher Man says,
“I am here to tell you the news about heaven …”
He always waits until the car pulls
out of the station before he begins.
“I used to smoke, cheat, steal … Jesus gave me a new …”
You figure it isn’t easy to preach
the word to these bones,
these bones that ride these rails.
The ones who hear him won’t give him
the time of day, so to speak.
The heavenly choir riding
that peace train home
is tuning out the song.
“Jesus came into this world to seek
and to save that which was lost …”
On my fractured CD player,
Marty Robbins sings in my ear.
Yes. El Paso. One of the songs I can’t hear
is about the bad cowboy saved while rustling cattle.
In the song lightning stampedes the herd
and a strike splits a tree into the shape of a cross
and the bad cowboy sees it and is saved from his evil ways.
Kind of reminds me of that Sgt. York movie
when lightning shatters the rifle Alvin is carrying.
Norfolk Street and the Preacher Man’s still going.
I’ve been running in to him for about four years.
A lot of good it did me, eh?
The walking dead are trying to tune him out.

In desperation to get his baritone droning
out of their heads they read the ads posted overhead.
It doesn’t matter that they are written in Spanish
“Su Dinero Cuando Usted Lo Necesita” – make
funny sentences by mixing up the the foreign words.
This must be the 20th time
“from out of nowhere Felina has found me.”
You remember, of course, that I got the CD player to play
more or less – in one ear, depending
on a jostle here and there.
But it’s only playing one song over and over
and I can’t reach down to get it out of my pocket to re-set it.
Here goes the “handsome young
stranger lay dead on the floor.”
My fingers have given up and I’m writing in a fist.
You could wonder – but my hand is asleep
when I need it most.
Preacher Man got off at Bloomfield Avenue.
I hear a lot of buses pass that way.
Our car rattles on to Davenport Avenue
and Branch Brook Station.
Two more modes of transportation,
“then Felina good-bye.”

-- Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

From Voices On The Bus, train subway, sidewalk and in my head

RIDING BACKWARDS

while traveling on the lightrail or train
or the street car to St. Charles
unsettles some hapless commuters.
Things moving away evoke the rush
of falling off a cliff
and not landing until the next stop.

It’s odd to see the sun set in the east
reflected in the opposite window.
But we’re so grateful to be
on the lightrail heading home.
Many of us scurried en masse
down three flights of stairs to get on this car.

Facing backwards, looking out the window.
Seeing the brown leaves, the dying weeds,
the buzz cut on tree limbs dogging catenary lines.
This subway car is full of people with tales to tell.
They chatter away with different accents,
speaking in pairs about who knows what.

Preacher man speaks to all the lost souls.
All these years and not one convert.
The closer this streetcar gets
to our bus departure time,
the slower it percolates
on these rusty rails.
Today’s the day I would
sit next to the bow-legged
middle linebacker
who spent the day riding a horse.

At Branch Brook Station,
we see the tall building
a half block north. A huge chunk
of the brick siding has fallen away
this very day. Our bus driver, #31600
on the ninety-three Hoover,
points out the building,
so we don’t miss it,
so we’ll have something
to talk about when we
get back to our families.

- By Anthony Buccino
From VOICES ON THE BUS
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

THE BOOTCH

Maybe some day they’ll name a ferry after me? The Bootch.
And everyone can ride The Bootch
to play Tourist in the Big City or go home to
the rest of America after a day of wonders.

I shall do a poetry reading. You can join me.
We’ll have others, strangers get on and off
and I’ll keep talking, reading my poetry,
pretending I still have feeling in my fingers,
that if I wanted to, I could write a poem
about this very box that rises and closes
and carries people up and down
like the ferry across the Mersey from Jersey
to the white tent building on Manhattan’s shore

I shall conspicuously spew these words on the ferry
named after me and anyone who
pays can come along to listen – I promise
I won’t read the old stuff and you won’t be
afraid of the water. Leave that to me.

- By Anthony Buccino
From VOICES ON THE BUS
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
******************

SOMETIMES ON THE TRAIN

Sometimes on the train
or wherever,
when you’re reading something,
well, sometimes you don’t
want the ride to end.
Sometimes you want to hear
the chatter of strangers.
Sometimes you just want
to keep on reading
and stay in that magical
world of ink stains
that dried upon some page,
just stay there
on the train.

- By Anthony Buccino
From VOICES ON THE BUS
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

OUT THE WINDOW

Sitting on this stupid train
in the middle of nowhere
in New Jersey’s steaming swamp
we ask each other
What’s going on?
And everyone’s clueless.

When the speaker crackles
with the conductor’s voice
you’d swear someone started
an engine that’s already running.
Who knows what he said?

If you got a seat, you hunker down
pretend there’s no one else here
to hear you when you snore.

Standing, you gaze at the nape
of someone standing inches from your face.
You see this guy needs a haircut.
or that guy wears cheap cologne.

Look out the grimy window
if you got one with any kind of view.
Ask why is the sky blue?
How high is up?
How much does the earth weigh?
Did they name it Viagra
to rhyme with Niagara?
Why does one snap always break
on a two-snap leather briefcase?
Will this train ever start moving?

When I get to work
I’m going to look for a new job
where I don’t have to take a train
to get stuck in the mucky meadowlands
to look out the window
at those free-flying birds.
I can hear them laughing at me
and I wish I was anywhere else but here.

- By Anthony Buccino
From VOICES ON THE BUS
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

GROVE STREET SUNRISE

Bloomfield, N.J.

Bemoaning the early hour of the day,
the summer morning light still asleep
as the sun – over there – considers
rising above New York City.
Were I on Montauk Point
this lightening moment
would be minutes past,
but here in Bloomfield
the lights are on
at Grove Street station.
Pass the jazz sculpture,
that’s not work, it’s music,
still resting in night shadows.
Pass the ticket vending machines
to stand under the overhang
and wait for the five-fifty.
The sun awakens
while we are underground,
hunkered in a soot lined tunnel.
We emerge Penn Station,
amble by rote
up escalators to our PATH cars,
cross the hundred year old bridge
over the ten thousand year old Passaic,
over a slight hill, and arc
down to Harrison Station
where other early risers
await this very PATH train.
Across the meadows the golden sky
over-exposes the big city’s
square and pointy skyline.
It is the sun and Harborside
is to the east.

- By Anthony Buccino
From VOICES ON THE BUS
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

WAITING FOR THE BUS

Belleville, N.J.

Cars speed down Franklin Avenue.
A small curb, two breakaway traffic signs,
a concrete trash can and a fireplug
protect me from skidding chunks
of steel, glass, plastic and rubber.

Up the block old men cross
to the Chandelier Restaurant
in the rain. The cars do not slow,
the old men time them as they pass,
then muster all their speed to scoot across.

When it rains at the bus stop, you get wet.
An umbrella might help a little bit,
but you get wet.
Duck in the doorway of the Bank of America
but keep an eye on the traffic up at the light,
that’s the first place you’ll see the bus
coming for you.

In the doorway of the bank
you stand out of the rain
but you’re still out in the rain.
Your umbrella here is as useless
as a three-dollar bill. You get wet.

At Continental and Franklin, sometimes
waiting here for the bus, you smell burgers
or something else cooking at Wendy’s.
Did you know General Washington marched
by this very corner a few hundred years ago.
Makes you wonder what the traffic was like
crossing this road in 1776 with British troops
not so far behind trying to take your fare?

I remember when A & P was where Wendy’s is.
Teen Angel and I went to buy stuff kids buy
at the supermarket and we’d dally a bit after paying
to check out the beautiful blond checkout girl
who wore short skirts. She was always nice to us.
Her younger sister was equally beautiful.
She was our grade but she was one of those girls
who was too beautiful for plain Joes to talk to.
She ran with an older crowd.

Maybe the A & P moved out already
before the building burned down to the ground,
I’m not sure anymore.
Nowadays, there’s a new, bigger A & P
around the corner a ways
where the Acme used to be
on Belleville Avenue in Bloomfield.

When it was the Acme store, my mom
won a diamond pendant in a giveaway.
They called to say she’d won, she thought
it was a joke. She never won anything.
There was that once on Bowling for Dollars
when she was the home winner.
And a few times she finally won at Bingo!
Splitting $25 with eleven other winners.

My sister won the raffle once
at the Holy Family bazaar.
I remember she gave some money
to the little girl who picked her winning ticket.
My sister used to take the bus from this street
to the subway to her key punch job
at Mutual Benefit. When she was late for work,
teasing her hair or putting on makeup,
she asked Mom to drive her
to this bus stop on the corner
or if she was real late
to the subway station on Fifth Street.
The same place I’m heading this very day.

If there was one thing Mama didn’t like
it was driving in rush hour traffic.
When she was a girl she lived in Newark
and took the trolley everywhere.
When I was a boy, we took the 37 bus
to the old subway and shopped downtown
at Bamberger’s department store.
If I wasn’t too much of a pest, she bought me
a hot dog and orangeade at the basement stand.
Like those Presidential Subway Cars, that A&P
and Bamberger’s, though, Mama is gone.
Here, the bus is coming for me.

- By Anthony Buccino
From VOICES ON THE BUS
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

Book covers

Most of the poems on this site have been collected in one or more of the following books.

Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.