At The Bus Station Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Angle to angle, curve
to curve, as passengers shove
for the bus's door,
slipping off, as everybody
pushes through to the door,

until a stretched tunnel
of burly-boned men
let sniveling and screaming
kids take their seats first.

Suitcases and bags tossed
at each other in a storm
of drifting bundles and heavy
polythene and plastic
containers and carryalls.

Handbags fight with cartons
and other paper packs,
as a flurry of hands lift and toss
off backpacks and briefcases
too fat for their compartments.

But honking sets the tone
for the last call for passengers
to climb to their seats
all numbered and tagged

to tickets tossed off
to travelers, who peck at them
like toucans, everybody
scrambling to be served first.


(ii)

Everybody is a passenger
with luggage - even he
who travels with no handbag.
Like this man, who checked
in carrying a small file,
the rest of his body free as air:

"I'm carrying no luggage
other than my torso and legs",
the man bawls out

to explode a balloon
of cackle and giggle withheld
in whizzed waiting bladders
of passengers' breath
heavy like an outpour
from an erupting volcano.

The man, arms folded
in his seat, carries a gabbro
of memories sitting
on him with an elephant's bulk.

His sinking chest spins
a wallet full of rubber checks
bounced back at him.

Beneath his tightened belt
swells a stitched pouch
full of kited checks
that can fill up deep trunks,
all his zippered bags
and space in his drawers.

A tall cupboard in one
of his sprawling rooms swirls
with old IOUs adding up
to tons of money he must
stack up and pay back
to his bank in one month.

At the last blare, the bus
jerks off on a trip
stretching beyond distant horizons
of mist and fog,
the man buried in his hazy trench.