Thursday

I get on the bus and we’re roaring
It’s late, so late that it’s morning
Thursdays are always filled with
drunks and regret
But you wouldn’t
Know it, all laughing and talking over the speakers
Tucked beneath my ears, a set
Of tiny eyes squinting in the overhead
Lights. It’s going to be like this all night
I can’t hear my own thoughts
And everyone is lively and asleep
They won’t stop being happy, it’s
Sickening. Why can’t we have sad drunks,
My people? But it doesn’t matter

We hit two stops and everyone departs
Except me and two others
One kid not nineteen, wasted, but tries to pay
Thanks to the bus driver, gives him a little prayer-like
Symbol, a plastor (sic)
Blessing the nightly Charon
And he is nearly run over as the ship roars on
Lost in Styx
The bus driver at the helm, concerned over these kids
Like a father tucking to bed a child
Who has had one too many drinks and snores
Our king of nighttime revelries,
The patron saint of 3 am bus stop
Binging, wide awake
He’s the guardian angel of all of us.

We’ve passed the freshman houses
And it’s all jazz now, as we head to
Quiet town, so much quiet I could
Fill my cup in it and forget
Everything. I can hear the sky moving.
I exit the bus, toss two coins to the boatman
And walk home.
I guess it’s sometimes nice to be alone.
In the dark like this, the way I live
On a night so perfect it’s superlative
Doesn’t seem so small anymore
A part of the pitchblack sky light
Music so haunting it only plays
When you’re not all right
On a Thursday night
It’s so clear and bright in the dark
The bus leaves to pick up more patrons—asleep
While I walk away to my streetlamp sanctuary
Both alive and dying in the deep