The schizophrenic man at the bus stop
wipes his nose on his red bandanna,
then ties it around his head,
greasy hair framing his face like a halo.
He will not take my silence for no answer.
He sidles slightly closer and I withdraw
as much as I can without moving.
I am trying to finish the tress poem
but my eyes are pulled away from my notebook,
pen stilled, loss immanent.
He chants a relentless litany
of mumbled interrogatives and jibes:
Hail Mary full of grace?
He makes it a question.
For a second, I wonder how he knew
my name was Mary.
When I look up to meet his jumbled gaze,
he blows cigarette smoke into my already aching eyes.
Smiling his beatitude, he calls me "Mother Mary,"
signing the cross with self-mortifying jabs.
There's no sanctuary on the bus.
My cross to bear, he sits behind me,
leaning forward to whisper
Hail Marys into my averted ear.
He smells of sweat and Old Spice aftershave.
At the corner of Third and Union,
he tells me he is an archangel
sent by God and traveling incognito
to call me to sit in sorrow
at my crucified son's feet.
Pulling the cord, I rise to meet him
genuflecting. As I get off the bus,
he begins to tell the back of the bus driver's head
today's installment of his Madonna visions.
First Published in Issue
22 of Gravity:
A Journal of Online
Writing, Music and Art, September 1998
|
|
|
|
|
|
||