Public Bus 1/27/15

She gets on, dropping coins,

then chatters, down the aisle.

A daughter-voiced woman,

talks at her father through everyone.

They confirm her denials and look away.

Almost to the back of the bus

then her body next to me.

Already a rigidly quiet man

is burrowed in his privacy,

displaying obedience to his mother's memory.

He gives no evidence of the inner rage

that runs deep seated to my other side. 

On this public bus, settled in three abreast,

who cares about us seated across our lives.

We now sway in unison,

indifferent to what can't be helped by transit.

To me, these two are courageous

and wear their wounds divinely.

My confession lacks.

"I still think parenting is a lousy concept,"

to say for myself.

On this bus, she chatters, his mandibles grind,

and I’m reverie.

Facing thought-frames juxtaposed

against the bus's stops and goes.

Images of childhood abuses get on and off.  

Reenactments seem to be happening,

meeting my parents as me for them.

Is this a tradition, like the public bus,

I sadly must pass on?

The hydraulic brakes crack in my ears

setting off my father's wishes for my success

verbally whipping me dry.

"I am inadmissible in his future me." 

Seated between these two,

I am easily impressioned into their child,

only he is my mother's wishes

and she, my dad's.

On the one side, he is my mom's no-says,

her private womanness unfit for her child's ears.  

Sitting in his supposed silence touching me,

inwardly I listen to mother through him.

In his presence, I sit her on my lap as my child, 

freeing her child, freeing me.

On the other side, she, as my father,

struggles with these circumstances

to project her anguish.

I am the child of innocent trespass,

I scream at her with all my heart,

"tell me dad, tell me . . . " 

It sets me free.

I now inwardly give to her my reassuring hand. 

Cupping father as my child through her presence, 

freeing him to free me. 

I feel us all,

wanting this bus to ride-out parenting's predicament, 

to free up the blame, the misconceptions,

to say and unsay all that's done and passing.

Riding on the public bus,

looking into these others

for my child to set me free.