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On How the Bus Moves and I Keep Moving
By Victor Vazquez
(click here to hear this here poem)
I board
this mechanical beast that swallows me here and spits me out there
just another vessel in the capillaries of this city's
veiny flesh.
This busline
has its own humming throbbing heartbeat
as do all the others
all humming
their humming
coming to one single
beat
the beat
is like a:
"hummm..."
almost sounds like:
"ommm..."
it is the universal heartbeat
and this busline
is Siddhartha's river
that monument exposing the fraudulence of time
this busline
is everywhere at once
this busline
when its tires massage the concrete creates a bassline
the rumblings in its bowels a breakbeat
brakes squealing
wheels turning, lurching
the edges of windows devouring hydrants, streetlights, mailboxes they
disappear under a scratched and painted film
and I'm riding the river
and I'd like to get to work on time
but the river keeps laughing at me, telling me that time doesn't exist
and I know that it's true
I only wish my boss knew that too.
So I wait patiently to be moved to my desired destination
while the forces of friction
battle the mechanical pixies of transportation.
They make the rumblings of a quiet
respiration.
The breathing is the beat of my body
telling me to keep moving.
There is a violent world of atoms colliding within me.
I'm propelled by a force that will ultimately destroy me.
We live to move
and we move to live
and this incessant movements stops
when the river runs dry
and we sigh
our final breaths
and we die.
And so I move constantly
from there to here
from here to there,
slowly wearing my skin and bones bare
I bare
my chest and wrists and neck
to the sun and the earth and the water and air.
And I am you and you are me and we are God collectively
so eat and breathe and laugh and cry
and move and cough and laugh and die.
—Victor Vazquez finds women who ride AC transit very attractive. If you
see him sleeping on the 51, wake him up and talk to him... He likes shrimp.
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