The Bus

A funny poem about a bus ride to school.

Sixty kids and one adult,

you gotta love those odds.

The perfect place for pulling pranks

and throwing paper wads.

Hank is standing on his head.

Billy's playing ball.

Peter wet his pants again.

Tasha pushes Paul.

Steven steals. Kevin cries.

Millicent is missing.

Katie punched her cousin Keith.

Ben and Jen are kissing.

Me, I'm taking lots of notes

on public transportation.

I think the bus provides me with

the finest education.

 Visit robertpottle.com for permission to use this funny poem .

The Bus is  a funny poem I wrote several years ago. It has appeared in many books such as Moxie Day the Prankster , If Kids Ruled the School , The Ultimate Guide to Celebrating Kids Vol. II , and it is also scheduled to appear in two upcoming books of my funny poems.


I had a lot of fun writing this poem. I spent a long time getting the list part of the poem just right. I really focused on get just the right sounds in the words in the list. I used many of the sonic devises that poets use such as alliteration , consonance , and assonance .


When I do author visits at schools I use this funny poem to demonstrate my writing process. During this workshop I let the students see inside my writer's notebook. As a former teacher, I know that it is easy for children to get the idea that how they see a poem in a book is how it actually started out. By showing students at the schools I visit the inside of my writer's notebook, I am making it clear that revision is a very important part of the writing process for real authors and not just something their teacher nags them about.