The Hippopotamusman

Into the world of the red glass bus

came a man with a face like a hippopotamus

Grotesqueeruptions made horrific

an otherwise normal ugly face

Wartsscrambled over his head

peeping between thin twigs of dry hair

like pink shiny sunsets

Hanging below the neckline

like grapes festering on a vine

And when he blinked

you could glimpse the drunken dance

in the whites of his eyes

like the flash of underpants

through unbuttoned trouserflies

Had the passengers been in groups

there might have been laughter

But they were all singles

and turning their faces to the windows

did not see the view

but behind the privacy of eyelids

had a mental spew

Limpinggropingly looking for a place

went the substandard man

with the hunchbacked face

and finding one sat

and beholding his mudstudded boots

the hippopotamusman

wondered whether it was wednesday.