Marks On The Bus

On a bus ride downtown, I take a few too many coricidin cough pills and I’m starting to feel cold inside. It’s only a dollar to get to pike place from where I live, and the bus stop is conveniently located just across the street.

It’s good to get out of the house; give my roommates some space. I’ve made today an unofficial holiday and am on my way to find somewhere to enjoy it. I wonder who will miss me. Work continues with or with out you, but there is someone there though who loves me, and will soon be wondering where I am.

I’m on the bus, and heading downtown.

There are so many people out today. Pretty girls; the ones I consider pretty I fall in love with if given even the slightest chance. All I need is a look, a slight gesture, less even. I can’t explain what it is. But even given the slightest chance I probably wouldn’t know what to do with it. More likely than not, I’d pick up and duck into the shadows somewhere and wonder why I can’t better cope with people around me.

But it’s fine. I’m on my way downtown and with the help of a healthy dosage of dextromethorphan in my blood stream I feel that everything is just fine. This bus is almost twice the length of the one I’m used to riding, and folds in the middle like a giant accordion around every turn. Some teenagers sitting in the back are playing they’re radio louder than they should and I get some sort of curious pleasure out of the discomfort on the faces of those around them.

Sometimes I think that I learned how to feel or express emotions in a backwards kind of way. Unable to participate within normal social parameters, I find myself most comfortable around those with more debased or criminal tendencies. Someone once told me that I have anti-charisma. They did not offer up this information with the intention of being hurtful, but simply as a diagnosis of my crippled social condition.

Passing through lower Freemont now, I can look up and see the bridge of Aurora Avenue reaching over the expanse of the sound. When I first moved here I heard about a hijacking that took place upon a bus some months back while crossing that very bridge. Some shots were fired and the bus flew head first over the edge. Fortunately it had already crossed the greater portion of the bridge, so that from the height of the precipice it had fallen from, the sheer drop had only been several yards to the ground.

I’m feeling kind of tired; it’s the antihistamines. I’ve got that Beastie Boys song floating through my head. What’s it called? Mark on the Bus? “…won’t you take me away, and take away me…”

I can feel chills running down my spine as I notice the approach of the city skyline. And there’s that strange pillar with its vagina shaped beacon you can see flashing its blue light phosphorescence over the industrial surroundings here at night.

For some reason the energy in this city is different than that of any other place I’ve been before. There’s something, for a lack of a better word, magical about it. I feel sad and excited, and inspired and detached, all at the same time. This is the first place I have ever been where you can see snow capped mountains on the horizon, while you yourself stand amongst skyscrapers.

I can sit and scribble poems here all day. I’ve taken up writing poetry on dollar bills, now these fucks are really earning something. It’s a federal offense, I know. But I’m willing to take the risk. I do it for the people. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

Where am I going? Where is this bus taking me? I thought I wanted to hang out by the docks but now I feel like going over to Gas Works. Gas Works has the best view of the downtown nighttime skyline. There, you can see its mirror image reflecting off the sound. It isn’t that late, it isn’t even dark yet, but by the time my trip starts it’ll be almost sunset.

But no, I cannot digress; must head forward. What am I doing? I’m downtown sitting on an empty bus parked next to a Starbucks waiting for the driver to expel me. I guess I should get off. But to where do I go? Capital Hill? The U-district? For what? I want to be outdoors, but I can’t decide on what to do. Maybe that’s why I took the bus to begin with because the bus doesn’t get confused, or anxious, or sad. It just goes. It’s a constant, it is always going somewhere; and it’s not that I am trying to assign malapropos, affectuous metaphysical properties to this public transpiratory vessel. It’s just that I feel comfort in the cradle of its apathetic bosom.

I believe in the ever present battle between what you want and what you should do. The dichotomy adherent in this existential war against what is seen as good and productive, and that which is bad and unproductive and in some cases damaging to…

Hmm… no, this is all wrong. It’s more simplistic than that.

Like these scratches carved into the seat next to me. “Suck my dick.” Is it a love poem? Or just a random image of inspiration scraped into reality by some unknown troubadour.

Maybe life is less complex than we make it out to be; like marks on a bus.