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Terminus

Missing image
Terminus



It’s just a bus, right?
Sitting there, empty
at a suburban terminus.
Long and flat and dirty
like the early morning
sunlight.
What is it about it
that just doesn’t seem
right?
What makes its ordinariness,
its banality seem incongruous?
Shouldn’t its billboards
shout the news
about us
and how it ended?
Maybe it’s its emptiness.
It should be full of people
leading their lives,
going somewhere.
But it isn’t.
And I realize -
neither are we any more

and that we measure
our pain
in the distance
between ourselves
and the everyday

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Comments


  • gnosisonG silver member
    April 12

    Edit | Reply

    Measured Melancholy.

    No windfalls upon arrival at this particular junction Windhover. If a glittering prize is what we seek at the tail-end of a lengthy relationship then surely the reward is portrayed as tarnished in your thoughtful piece.
    A dull monochrome is mirrored here it seems to me, John, perfectly matching the anemic bleakness of bastard Winter swirling outside my window right now.
    Great last stanza - lilting songlike quality to it.
    "between ourselves
    and the everyday "
    Must beg to differ with my esteemed colleague below and profess adverse contention towards changing anything in this part.

    Cheers!

    gG

    . Rewarded 8

  • dave ochs silver member
    April 10

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    hey john

    nice attention to detail of the little things that bug us but fly under the radar to consciousness. not only does it register with you but you figure out what it is. a rare look into our thinker.
    dave

    . Rewarded 4


  • Lad silver member
    April 10

    Edit | Reply
    Strange, John, but I've had a similar bad dream a few weeks ago, and you've worded it up to its full fright, and puzzled sorrow.

    I really like the play on "it" and "terminus" that held up hand-in-glove throughout this dark pondering, especially in that nearly stuttering "...it's its emptiness," like an unwillingness to realize what's happened: that terminal apocalypse, that final "it" -"long and flat and dirty" from the afterblast.

    Scary stuff, but who knows what "rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born"? As your fine line says: "...it just doesn't seem (real, but it does seem)...right" - it's the result of what we've done.

    Powerful business going on in this dark scene, with a windhover flying over it, wondering and sighing. Damn tight writing!

    Later...

    Lad
    PS: minor thoughts: did you intend "it's" before "everyday"? And might "humdrum" work a bit better than "everyday"? Just my two-cents worth...

    . Rewarded 8