Neal Pearce

Bus Stop

Friday came like a choir of singing fish.
Mrs. Wantonmost was waiting for the number 3 to
Ticklesexbury. She was pie-eyeballing the eye of a storm.

The feline next to her was winding a hatchet in the hurricane of her hat.
"I'll punch her tits flat!" she told her friend (who was on speed of lies).

"Simpson Wickupper says she's a cider park shag." the girl replied.

"Will you shut your growl-chasms!" Mrs. Wantonmost tersed.

Each girl shot the other a look from the hook in their knickers.
And the girl with the hurricane hat ruptured her
whore's girth in raids of violet at Mrs. W. in all her
haughty hogliness (who blew inside like a whistle without a pea).

The bus came and they all sighed like sausages:
the man at the front with the unruly lady's beard;
the son of a black man's gun; some man's lover -
two others (it doesn't matter who) one tall, one fat,
and Mr. Ravenvex in his 'shame-on-you-all' shoes
(who was going to work with his unexploded bomb again).

 

Screwsandra Street

The house at 21 is at the
shallow end, near the sick fig tree.
Its brass hinge whore-way is
red under 18 coats of black.

The resident next door (who no one sees)
should be lying dead, as soon as
someone finds her.

Mrs. Cracklebracken at 25 has
a toe in everyone's pie.
She's always spout-roundling,
or tickling talk-about: the doctor says this
greatly inflates her husband's dementia bubble.

Today is a would-be Wednesday.
Mr. Loonscooning has poise for the
vistas of noise in his floral inaction station.

But, see now, he is bending Hell's gates to
go curd-castling past the exit of peristalsis street.
So, up he goes mush-quaking the apples and pears,
to the station of unmentionable inventions.

Presently, he is passage breaking, brazen-moon-most,
at the helm of the great white waterway.
But before he is cleft-right and trouser clad,
Mrs. L. powers her strong cheese calling -

"There's a man at the door asking about the
lady at 23...have you seen her?"

"I'm on the smellyphone to Mr. Brown!"
he shouts back.

The man at the door laughs light into
all the shady corners, then, praising
Mrs. L's prosthetic ear, he puts the
street to his feet and is gone.

A fly lands on Mrs. L, whispering in the
lisp of her eye: it has sung in the swarm:
spawn of the babe, from the nearby
batch of rolling gigga-whats.

Neal Pearce

 

'I've heard that one way of overcoming the nerves of live performance, is to imagine the audience is naked. But the terrifying thing is, that some of you actually are...'