Guy at the bus stop

[just mercedes]

I'm trying to get back into this, but I think the form and the rhymes murdered this poem. Anyway, have at it.

A man was waiting for the bus.
Averting my eyes, I heard I don't understand why you averted your eyes[
Familiar nonsense in his tone,
And listened as he slurred.

He held a bag of empty butts there must be a better word than 'empty'
That he kept lighting up.
Perhaps each lighter flick beheld beheld? You're anthropomorphizing a lighter click, not even a lighter. Very abstract.
A dream that’s held in cups.

His pinioned wings were burned away, how do you know he'd once had wings?
And had been long ago.
Like naked men at sea he drank
The salty lifeless flow. So, men at sea with clothes drink something else?

I fancied all this from his gait, If he's waiting at the bus stop, he's not walking around, surely?
And drank him up myself
Against the active urge to place
Him on a dusty shelf. Just there for the rhyme?

I’ve inked him here but I forgot
The zenith of this tale. I'm not sure how his rage and silence were the high point
He fell into a lear-like rage,
And soon, a silent quail. Those silent quail - very hard to catch!

I think you got caught up in the rhyme scheme and manipulated your words to fit, rather than manipulating rhyme to fit your words. I like the sketch done 'en plein air' but somehow the rhyme takes away the vivid impressions.