The Wilshire Bus, by Charles Carreon
I. Overture
This bus rattles on
through the night.
RTD, dirty and doomed,
it slides through its own
Tunnel of poverty
Down bright-lit Wilshire as
the deep blue twilight
enriches the dusk
behind the black tree
silhouettes of the neighborhoods.
Mini-markets, corner malls,
new car showrooms, hair salons
slide by, past scratched-up plexi windows.
At last, almost everyone gets off
before we reach the Westside.
Flashing light red and yellow
bar marquee has
no announcement.
No show tonight.
I've gotta pee.
The Wilshire bus makes you suffer,
drags you painfully down the whole built-up
congested length of town,
till you despair of your life,
of ever reaching your destination
in a timely manner.
Drags you through midtown, and Fairfax,
and Beverly Hills and Westwood and West LA,
and at last, when all the other riders have given up,
it lets you out,
My God, in front of Polly's, which is crammed,
of course, with people who are having a better
time than you are,
presumably they did not have to ride
the Wilshire bus.
II. Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger Too
Winnie-the-Pooh would not have enjoyed
this trip, nor would Piglet or Christopher Robin.
There would not even be
the possibility of sighting a Heffalump
from this vantage point, although you might
spot some threadbare Tigger lounging
by a mailbox, bumming dimes, if you looked
close enough.
III. Aliens
The Wilshire bus is chocked with people who don't live
where you do, who aren't the same kind of people and
don't live your way, don't bury their noses in books
for the whole trip, don't catch up on their work
between now and McNeil Lehrer, don't do a thing except
stare and rock wearily side to side and back and forth
with no expression.
IV. Sleaze
Forty five minutes after you board and you're barely
in Beverly Hills. The scratch-dimmed glamour goes
sliding by, and the streets all meet at jack-knife
angles. Bright neon, and a glimpse of violet bar light
radiating from the ceiling of a glassed-in booze
emporium. Where's the mescaline house, the DMT lounge,
the ecstasy den? This bus doesn't take you through
Venice.
V. Pastorale
Now, in the long, smooth stretch going west from where
Santa Monica Boulevard crosses Wilshire, garden hotels
line the streets with high-rise serenity.
Tiny white lights twinkle in delicate tree branches,
the Westwood signature. I see a lobby, and a few hotel
room bedside lamps; I sense a certain TV ambiance. The
bus slows to a stop at an angle I know by the tilt of
the floor is Comstock, the light before Beverly Glen.
I'm coming home. My children are waiting, the video
is waiting, the leather couch, the wooden floor, the
porch light is waiting.
VI. Carnavale
Westwood & Wilshire: at the intersection of dream and
reality, UCLA spills its progeny forth into the
marketplace like a giant uterine canal of higher
education, slick with drink, commerce and bland sex.
They're going for a joyride; if they wanted higher
education, all they'd need to do is catch the Wilshire
bus.
VII. Sea Dream
The bus goes whistling past the VA cemetery and the
old brown hospital buildings where I always imagine
T.S. Eliot's patient lying etherized. Where San
Vicente veers off in a northward-sweeping curve to a
cooler climate. (Flashback to another night when a
driver on a lark followed that seductive curve north,
and drove us silently to the beach, through the dark,
cool onshore breeze. We riders were dumbfounded, but
glad to be off Wilshire, the old tyrant; no one spoke
a word -- we picked new stops on the improvised route,
and walked ourselves home by different ways.)
VIII. Home Stretch
The bus driver tonight sticks to the route, and I'm not
dreaming; I'm in the seedy part of Brentwood. There's
the mini mall on Barrington, and the liquor store where
I used to park my bike on the sidewalk and buy one Bass
ale from the middle eastern fellows and their female
companions. Still needing to pee, I feel the potholes
of Santa Monica stabbing my bladder with abandon. We
pass the Wherehouse and Jerry's Liquors, pass
McGinty's, Berk's and Savon, Crown Books, Bagel Nosh
and Vons, Callahans and I must mention the Liquor store
of Norris E. Roberts. There's Lincoln with its
homeless park, and copy shops on left and right, a
seven-eleven selling lotto all night long, and Polly's
old folks coffee shop, at last.
IX. Paso Lento
On the Wilshire Bus you ride
to a destination that is incidentally yours;
you pass by, and may touch
the sequins drooping from the breasts
of an aging whore;
you clutch
at the cold, stainless steel pole, counting street
names like a prayer that you're tired of;
you arrive at last, purified:
the driver's washed his hands,
and you have firmly grasped
your briefcase full of thorns.