My Ordinary Bus Ride Home Poem by C Richard Miles

It was just the ordinary, biting, finger-freezing end
Of a shower-sodden, ordinary, spring day;
Ordinary rods of rock-hard rain rushed rattling down
In an ordinary, raw and rankling way.
After the ordinary, world-weary wait,
I caught my ordinary, loaded, late-running bus,
Just ordinarily battling on,
Unnoticing ordinary, muttering masses with no fuss:
Ordinary passengers passed,
Ordinarily embarking, standing and alighting
In an ordinary manner, pushing
With ordinary, sharp-elbow shoving and fighting.
At the crowd-squashed, ordinary stair-steps
I stood, ordinarily, until Stamford Hill,
Where ordinarily, squeezing out
Its ordinary, human detritus, the busy bus unfilled.
Ever-emptier now, as was ordinary,
But fully filled with over-loud, odious, ordinary chat
About ordinary, topical trivia
And, over the megaphone mobiles, ordinary this and that.
Picking up the ordinary, free paper,
I read that ordinary local, Leona Lewis, popstar write
Of ordinary friends’ everyday, ordinary experience
Of muggings, knives, shootings, fights.
We ploughed through the ordinary puddles
In the rough and raddled ruts of the ordinary road.
Splashing ordinary plodding, paddling pedestrians
In ordinary, red-riding-hood raincoats.
I dawdled during an ordinary, dull, diversion detour
Off the ordinary rattling, rumbling route,
Since some ordinary, drug-crazed delinquent
Had decided ordinarily, senselessly to shoot
As was ordinary, some grudge-rival:
Ordinary, teenage gangster drop-down dead.
Ordinarily daydream-dozing, I missed maddeningly,
As usual, my ordinary stop’s down-set
And trudged ordinarily travel-tired
Along ordinary, plucked-up, patched-up paving-stones
Past ordinary, fading flowers
On the leaden-grey, leaning, ordinary lamppost’s bare-bones:
That ordinary memorial of the other
New year’s pointless, meaningless, ordinary killing
When our ordinary Wetherspoon’s
Ordinary bar-boy Barrington’s blood was sent spilling.
I stopped off for an ordinary, brown-bread loaf
And ordinary, skimmed milk at the scruffy shop,
Turned the ordinary corner
Where that burnt-down, broke-down fence left an ordinary gap,
Passed the next ordinary, floral tribute
On that other ordinary Hackney Heyworth road.
And the ordinary recycling bins
And the rubbish chutes which spilled out, ordinarily, their load,
Also the ordinary playground next to the centre
With the ordinary, waving grass, green on its roof,
To my ordinary tower-block, sole snaggle-tooth relict of six
Which stood ordinarily, aloof
Looking down on the ordinary Downs Park
With its ordinary flowerbeds and fun facilities
And its two ordinary special-schools
Catering carefully for ordinary kids with differing abilities.
Entering ordinarily with my new-fangled fob-key,
My ordinary lift was not on the ground floor.
Catching the opposite one, as ordinarily,
I reached my ordinary, beige-brown, flat-brown, flat door
And heard the ordinary, oft-repeated, off-hand, question
Which my flatmate ordinarily, simply said
As ordinary, “What sort of day was it? ”
I ordinarily replied, “ Oh, just the ordinary, ” nodding my head.

Envoi:
Next day, after penning this, an extraordinary event:
Another ordinary, senseless stabbing singularly meant
At Stamford Hill, extraordinarily but with no extraordinary fuss
I extraordinarily walked all way home as I couldn’t catch a bus.