There was a dead guy

sitting on the bus

in front of me tonight.

He was calling the office

on his cell phone

giving some last minute

instructions to some poor

bastard who worked for him.

He was talking in such a loud,

obnoxious voice I turned

to look if he was disturbing

anyone else. But the woman

across the aisle reading

the NY Times was dead

too and so were the couple

chatting behind her. In fact,

it seemed as if I were the only

living person on the whole

fucking bus. Naturally,

I began to get worried.

I was speeding down the

turnpike in a busload of dead

folks passed a landscape

of petrochemical drums and

mobster swampland. And

then I made the mistake

of looking in the rearview

mirror and seeing the bus

driver’s eyes looking directly

at me. I knew right then I

wasn’t going home alive

that night. It didn’t make a

difference whether he drove

off the bridge or slammed into

a cement mixer. I looked at

my pale reflection in the

darkening window and saw

what he saw: another pale-

faced dead commuter on

his way home to his house,

his family, his dinner, his tv,

and his moonlit sexless bed.

I wanted to laugh but the dead

don’t laugh they just sort of

unhinge their jaws in mute surprise.

Besides, even among the dead

I didn’t want to seem insane.