Under a powder blue sky across which ribbons of gray cloud fly like never-ending flags flown by mocking gods honoring the mediocrity of Man, I board a bus, a work bus, taking people from the Northeastern to the Eastern Baltimore County waterfront. The #4 bus of the MTA rarely runs more than half capacity and this is slightly less.

The driver is a mild-mannered, soft-bodied black man of good size.

On the first forward-facing seat is a monstrous, tattooed, whigger woman, with hip-hop attire, black gang tattoos, a three-foot braided pony tail and a black spade tattooed on the back of her neck. She sits scowling a better ghetto scowl than any mamma could manage. At 5’ 10”, 260, and solidly strong, she casts a shadow of menace about her.

The first bench seat behind the front wheel is occupied by a kindly-faced young woman who I immediately pity, for she possesses the physique and facial structure of former heavyweight boxing kind, “Iron” Mike Tyson. Seemingly desperate for simple friendship, she engages the other women with mild, hopeful smiles and fears eye-contact with the few men.

Across from her is a paleface crone of forty, who appears eighty, with nicotine-stained skin, teeth long gone, voice like sandpaper, whose well-meaning attempt to be kind to the Mike Tyson look-alike girl is touching in its raspy way.

In the seat before the back door sits a tattooed tart—a brunette with a temporarily good figure, that might withstand another child or another five years of slutdom, before spreading into awkward folds of indigo-graffitied fat. Like the beastly whigger woman she is dressed to work at Walmart, six miles down the road and already has her pre-work cigarette out, ready to light as soon as she steps off the bus.

The bus cruises down into Essex and another woman gets on: a Caucasian wench, with an indigenous Baltimore accent and a blonde-haired boy of ten. He is dressed like a normal boy, with no hip hop affectations. She is dressed in full Islamic garb, in a blue-dotted pattern on a white field, only her blue eyes visible. It is a school day and she seems to be taking the boy to a dental appointment.

The bus—a hybrid machine—whines down into Colgate, where another woman boards at the major transfer point before the Dunkin Doughnuts, across from the Bank of America at East Point Mall, where Old Malik was attacked by a male and female hooodrat at the ATM the year before last. This Central American or Mexican woman is almost five feet, with a copper complexion, straight Caucasian features, long, sleek, black hair, a nicely-curved, petite body, and a stern off-putting cast to her classically beautiful features. Dressed in sneakers, jeans and red sweater, she carries a small purse and a large car seat loaded with a baby and its things, the entire contraption as large as her from the hips up.

The driver misses the turn to Walmart and the two clerks and the crone began to howl their disapproval. The giant whigger with the ace of spades tattooed on her neck walks up to him, tells him he “fucked up” and takes over the direction of the bus, he apologizing and asking for mercy all along.

The beast women offload, except for the crone and the gentle giant negress who confides in the crone about something, to which the crone croons a crow-like cackle of compassion, punctuated by “awes girlfriend,” and the bus is a momentarily blissful place, the indecisive Islamic woman whispering to her boy about his questions concerning the passing scenes, mostly houses and dilapidated businesses.

Then comes the 7-11 boarding party.

A thin, willowy mangina of the white kind, with curly black hair, glasses, large head and small wedge-shaped face etched with a pencil beard, hips like the Latina and shoulders like the crone, boards the bus with a button-cute daughter of three, who looks amazedly about as she holds his kind, doting hand.

Pushing past them as they pay is an angry negress, of five feet and 150 pounds, with a short afro and a preternatural glare upon her scowling face. She holds her four-year-old girl-child with one hand and punches her back and slaps her head alternately with the other as she curses her, calls her “bitch” and pushes her ahead to the back deck of the bus.

The bus driver ignores the wench and her suffering child, demanding no payment.

The crone looks slack-jawed at the brutality.

The large, retarded Mike Tyson girl cringes and goes fetal in the two seats she occupies.

The Latina covers her baby as her beguiling brown eyes narrow to killer shark eyes and follow the negress under brows that relax rather than scrunch as one would expect.

Before me, as the mangina dotes upon his delicate paleface daughter, she looks worriedly up into the back of the coach where the negress curses her crying child, with a look on her face betraying an expectant dread, as if wondering if all children eventually come upon such a horrid fate as to be whisked off by a beast in broad daylight while those who might otherwise care turn away.

A mile down the road, at the main stop on North Point Boulevard, three stoner palefaces board, a man-boy built along the lines of the mangina and two girls: one thin and draped in hippie attire and the other chubby and slutted out with badly-inked breasts and ill-fitting jeans with love handle spillage.

I offload at Wise and North Point and shoulder my pack, three miles to go before I make my waterfront destination. The sky is now clear, the wind augmented by the rushing trucks, the scream of their wheels and the closing of the bus door erasing the pained whimperings of the beaten slave-girl on the bus, tortured for the 2,000 dollars a month in government benefits her tormentor is paid for keeping her hostage, until she is released into the urban wild at age 15 to bring another anguished soul before the All-Consuming God of Things.