School Bus
Only of eleven, and Jimmy’s got nowhere to sit.
Obviously not next to the driver,
Whose mornings were fresh and smelt better
Than his late evenings.
Nope, not next to the chatty teachers at front,
Smelling hopelessly of jasmine and rich talcum.
Jimmy’s got nowhere to sit,
Not next to the English teacher wearing a pallor under her
eyes,
Curing the previous night’s hangover of thoughts;
Nor her little son, away from her, disturbed by the loud
whispers of a marriage.
So Jimmy moves ahead,
Beyond - the fat nerds and skinny bullies,
The stiff athletes and imperfect scholars,
The tanned hopefuls talking about football,
The proud hopeless talking about nothing,
The pretty little girls hiding behind their braces and
eyestrain,
The gaudy ones wallowing in celebrated muck,
Sitting together, leaving Jimmy seat-less.
Still, Jimmy’s got nowhere to sit,
Not next to the 10th grader with chapped upper
lip,
Who always smells like the canteen chimney and takes huge
breaths.
Nor next to the worm behind a pile of books,
Anal and saying “Fuck” a lot.
Maybe next to The Girl from grade nine that Jimmy liked,
Looking painfully beautiful,
Her Irish white face dissolved in splendid sunshine,
Save for her swollen red nose and puffy eyes.
Her legs are unseemly, inexplicably un-spaced,
And a shrug covers bites from a dead pet (she never had),
While the guy she usually sat next to sits away,
Regaling his ugly gasp wearing suck-ups with tales,
A sick cancer in his laugh while at it.
“Not today”, Jimmy thinks and moves up.
At the end of the bus sits Dmitri,
Next to whom Jimmy definitely is not sitting,
Owing to Monday’s spat.
Meanwhile Dmitri still mulls over why the school is not
closed today,
Since the school bus ran over Jimmy yesterday.
- Diwakar B
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