‘Ditherers’
There’s a place at the slow end of town
where the fussy and fastidious
can’t-make-up-their- minds go.
It’s called ‘Ditherers’, a little hither
of Yon.
It’s where you mull over the menu
menacingly slow.
And dishes are consumed at a pace
only snails know.
Where anecdotes meander for miles
while the night nods off
and the moon hangs low,
There’s a diner called ‘Ditherers’
where minds to and fro.
The Kings of Leon could still use somebody, Caleb sings in his Kurt Cobain voice
& the Kurdish Freedom Fighter comes on too strong to Lynne, wanting to whisk her away with his Hindu Kush eyes
& the woman with the Mastiff shoulders walks past in her low cut dress
& sniggering sneer
& Des starts knock knock knocking on Heaven’s Door again because he knows we’re all here and I tell him to get back in his box coz you’re in the undiscovered country from whose bourne .. well, you know the rest
while Ruth limps off to the Ladies and Ted calls after her, that’s the best part of you gone,
and Sirocco knocks over his second glass of red on the white table cloth and Jarrod frowns and Gerry rushes over
and Max is cuddling Peter in the corner and the mulberry mutt mourns for its owner outside the window
& I’m talking much too loud but I’m in my cups And I tell the funny story about the pony walking into a bar again and I won’t be put down like a mad dog
& an officer from the penitentiary phones and says, no, Ades cannot be let out because it’s a Friday night
& we’re going round and round like skid marks on tarmac
& it’s just another Friday night in Paradise
I always draw the short straw.
She gets the drumstick.
I should be quicker
more assertive.
Less of a bozo.
That’s the trouble when you share.
In our circle
old courtesies die hard.
The lady goes first.
That’s us, at T Chow’s, the wonderful Chinese restaurant in China Town, our Cheers, on the last night before Lockdown. The place is bustling and you can only see half of it because the photographer stood in the middle to get a shot of the group, the one with the bloke in the wheelchair. It’s always happy there and everybody does know our name. There’s always three of us, often four but sometimes it grows to seven or eight.
Things are different now of course. Numbers are limited and they do a roaring take-away trade and there’s a new bloke, Brian — they always adopt an English name [is that a form of racism, I wonder?] —- who zips between tables spread out over the four quadrants of the restaurant. He’s young, he’s zippy and athletic with a great sense of humor. Everyone is cheery at T-Chow’s. You never see a long face or a frown. It’s where we hang out Friday nights. It’s our Cheers.
It had been a splendid evening but now, rankled by some recent memory and loosened perhaps by a little too much wine, he leaned across the table and made a cutting remark. She began to bleed almost immediately. His words raked across her wrists like a suicide attempt. She began to deflate in front of him. She had to learn not to take things so literally.
John Malone 