Three Poems
by Dave Hubble
Poetry
In a bus shelter (BlueStar 2)
A year-old impression of teenage lips
kissing perspex,
holes in the ‘No Smoking’ sign,
melted by cigarettes,
spider webs,
badly scratched graffiti
with no economy of line.
The water-torture drip
of rain between roof panels,
the green specks of algae and honeydew
dropped from lime trees.
A young mum with an empty pushchair
sits by the Sellotape ghosts
of a thousand unofficial ads.
Overheard
Evoking unwelcome thoughts of
Made in Chelsea,
designer-threadbare sixth-formers bray,
regaling fellow passengers
with nasal tales of
odd egg recipes,
cucumber foam, veloutés,
twenty-quid Parma Violet cocktails
and like, totally insaaaane
ice-cream flavours –
mustard and a funny purple one –
well it was London at the weekend, yah.
Their listen-to-us volume
makes the woman in the next seat
move away.
Meanwhile it’s the pre-teens
in the front seats
discussing climate change, race
and Canada’s
US refugees –
maybe the world’s not doomed just yet,
we’ll see.
Nostalgia
I miss you
but not as much
as proper gig-tickets,
early morning postal deliveries
that arrive before the working day,
the ritual of ordering
Bombay Duck, then
leaving most of it.
I miss you
more than all these things,
for, like the nightbus,
there’s a hole where you were,
a gap in the timetable
ending evenings prematurely,
rendering some experiences
untenable
when balanced against
the expense of being stranded.
About the Author
Dave Hubble has been published in places such as South, and Ink, Sweat & Tears, plus anthologies including Absent Ginsberg which briefly topped Amazon’s contemporary poetry charts. His first collection was Subduction Zone, and his pamphlet Navigational Array was recently published by Dense Weed Press.
He webs at: davehubblewriter.wordpress.com