First, let’s get this out of the way…
What is “cynglish”?
Cynglish
Pronunciation: \ˈsiŋ-glish\
Origin: Canada: created by Timothy G.M. Reynolds
Function: noun Date: 2009, July 24.
1: contraction of “cynical English” a particular variety of English distinguished by use in highly cynical compositions, performances and conversations
So, now to the first poem:
RIDING THE BUS
Riding the bus, the train, the bus, the shuttle… riding it all and all of it riding on a two-fifty fare.
Spending more time with strangers travelling to and from work than with our own families before and after, work.
Strangers who twitch and swear and spit and shove, behaving better than the people we love to love, from below or above,
Reeking of solvents or bathed in Old Spice or new Axe or that industrial-strength Brut left over from Christmas 1979.
Buses stinking of vomit and skunkweed and garlic and old socks, the trip to and from work and career and other-life is like two hours trapped in a teenager’s closet.
Not just any teenager, but your goth-dressed, face-pierced, crappy grades, I-want-to-live-with-the-other-parent, teenager.
Two-fifty a trip to get bumped and grinded and fondled — but no flowers, no chocolate, no simple “I’ll promise to call you but will lose your number in the next five minutes”. The freedom of frottage without commitment.
But on a bus you can jab jab jab an elbow or step on a toe, hard on a toe or fart never-so-gracefully in the face of these daily stranger relationships and no one says a word;
but treat your causeless James Dean teen with the same disdain and you’ll hear from Family Services the very next day.
And the day after, and for the rest of your days until the divorce is settled, the custody battle done, the bank account drained and the Beamer traded in for a used Toyota Tercel that never looks as good on page two of the local paper when they announce you’ve had another trial date.
Not so, the bus, the train, the bus, and the shuttle — no names exchanged, no hatred grown, no love lost, no lasting impression made.
So give me diesel fumes and ignorant strangers and vomit on my shoes just so I don’t have to go home to Hell in the home, homey in its own hellish way.
Give me back the grazing touch of a total stranger, the hardening of my nipples, the weakening of my knees… and then their cellphone rings and ABBA’s Dancing Queen causes us all, passenger strangers one and all, to lash out, bump the coffee hand or the phone hand or grinding grind a heel into their imported Italian in-step; because it’s all fakey fake, all falsely hoped for…
…and all going to happen again for all our tomorrows, on the not-so-Express bus up and down to Downtown.
~
Ciao for now,
Tim.
All words and images here are Copyright Tim Reynolds.
The Tao of Tim 
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