Palazzo Massimo

On Bus 64
Rome 2009

Please let it be a joke,

Played perfectly on April first,
To the fool who wrote this verse.
 

Bus 64 is like a bag of melting gummy bears sitting in the sun,

Sticky, sweltering, gluey and gross,
It smells like B.O., the kind that knocks you out when the bus jerks to a stop.
Bodies collide,
They don’t glide, they don’t dance,
There’s nothing fantastical about bus 64.

Getting groped is the best part,

Oh yes… it is true,
By a sneaky, dirty, sleazy Italian man who only wears one shoe,
He thinks he’s so stealthy that I haven’t got a clue, but it’s not true, I do.
I burn him to a crisp with my fiery glare.
 

Then I fly away to escape this ugly affair,

But when I open my eyes and peel my moist skin off from the old woman grinning at me

with a rotting black tooth,

I grimace when I realize the cruel joke my mind played,
For, yes, I am still on bus 64 with (oh joy) 20 stops more.