The Grey Hound Bus Tour

By Ken j. Martin

This tour was pieced together right at the heart of failure. Pressure was killing me-my whole family was having issues, I was having issues and I needed to rest- so I thought of an escape, a real escape. I was going to leave Georgia for good and start anew somewhere else.

The people I met along my Grey Hound journey filled me up and passed me along. I was in need of inspiration and prayer: seeking God became my daily meditation. Didn’t know Jesus liked the Greyhound, but I guess he can spend more time with the people in lengthy lines and long waits  lol.

Two of the greatest things about this trip were the inspiration and action that followed. Brave New Voices conference inspired me the most. To see teens get up and release their souls, in turn, showed me myself, giving me an example of my life by speaking for a generation that no one is listening to. After many of their pieces, I found myself walking off and just thinking about life and my decisions. BNV was my charge, so I now had another goal: to pave the way for youth to be truthful through their artwork, truthful about themselves and never  backing down from their stance.  
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Now to act. I arrive in Cincinnati early about 6:45 I was sitting and waiting for my ride... I know it’s early they were probably asleep, so I thought to wait till at least 7:30 before I called. A White lady, deaf and blind in one eye with one leg and her hair shaved to the center of her head, caught my attention. I was like, "Damn, she got it bad, right?" She drops her drink and I help her to get it up. She smiles, I smile back. She seems like a happy woman waiting in line for her bus.

The line starts to move until she reaches the bus door and tries to talk to the bus driver, but he simply walks off.

She’s ok with that. She just follows him. So he starts in the other direction. She speaks, but it sounds like a muffled horn. She waves her ticket and points to her bags. Finally, I say, “Sir, she needs help,” but her bags where still in the chair. She comes back in mad. "My bags," she says in her muffled voice. I said “her bags.” No one listens; the driver jumps on the bus and pulls off. I was upset for her. I have a sister with mental disability and if this had been her...well, I would have been in jail for my ACTIONS.  

That was Linda. And the Baggage man, a police officer and two reps could have helped her.

I made a call to Disability Advocates on her behalf and Lina eventually got the help she needed that day. Helping Linda went beyond sex, race or color. Linda was a person, someone who needed help and 5 grown and fully capable to see, fully capable of hearing and reading adults acted as deaf and disabled as the person they were supposed to help. This changed my stance in life and now I fight for all.

There is Water
Shifting through hills
Laced with green trees
Coved by dark blue skies
Penetrated by rods
Identified by blinking red lights
And it’s beautiful 
Beautiful like hidden stars under stormy clouds
In the hardest rain
Pounding on the long road
To anywhere but here 
Here is so temporary
Like natives of Atlanta
Gentrified and displaced
They follow the water to new places
That is as slow as deep moving rivers
Vast as the untrained trees of GA
Like how it use to be
Not like how it is now
Peaches on Peachtree Street
Plums down Parkway
Kids on Bicycles
Brothers on Skateboards
Piedmont Park a family place
Where it was ok to walk on the crab grass
Crab legs we share in the summer
Watermelons we loved in the summertime we sat on the concrete
Spitting out sunflower seeds
Bustin open the fire hydrant
Make it rain water child
Not money
On green trees
The untrained trees of Georgia
They cut down our untrained trees
Said they were sick and weak but they seem strong to me like
Travis, Barrie and Ken playing with hot rods
They lit up the late night sky
Smoke signal in the night sky for Georgians to move on
We now, follow the water but every now and then
We are reminded by the reflections of the trees
What Atlanta use to be
Home, slow and clean.
We now Fallow the water.