Coffee Shop Quartet.
that quartet of oldies, cosseted in their cardigans,
smugly commiserating the homeless
and Wheatus raps rancidly over the radio
‘I’m just a teenage dirt-bag, baby’
Billy Collins on my screen reading his poem
about Goya’s chandelier hat
lighting up the gloom of his garret
and the fusspot next to me
picking at the frosted icing on his fruitcake
as though it were a scab
* pic courtesy of pinterest
Creature.
That stain
on the sidewalk
something Neanderthal
like a creature
on a cave painting
We are sitting across from each other
trying not to stare
looking down at our phones.
There are some paintings on the wall
but no one is looking at them.
Perhaps they are the sort of paintings
that are not meant to be looked at
but are there to establish a presence,
maintain a mood.
Then I notice the paintings,
half figurative, half abstract
in faded denim blue
with black, springy squiggles
like a cat’s whiskers
are not signed.
Perhaps the painter was half abstracted
when he painted them
& simply forgot.
“I’m not happy with you”, I say to my poems.
They look at me warily.
“What have we done wrong?” they say.
“You’re too well behaved. Too orderly, genteel. Way too English”
“Too English?”, they say. “From the country that brought you Joe Cocker, the Rolling Stones, the Sex Pistols”
“Okay. Okay. Scrub ‘too English’.”
“So what else are we doing wrong?”
“You mince your way upon the page”
“Mince?”
“Yes. Like dainty school girls. Can’t you, like, stampede upon the page?”
“Stampede? We’re not fucking gauchos! The page is not the pampas.” they say.
“Can’t you buck, twist and beat a bit, Get a rhythm going? Get a bit of dirt on your hands?”
“You’ll have to let us out more,” they say. “You can’t keep us locked in with you at nights”.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
“Out,” they say , as they head out the door, ” to paint the the town red.”
‘Paint the town red?’ Does anyone still say that? These poems really do need to get out more.
“Okay, but make sure you’re home by twelve. Drive carefully.”
I can paint by numbers.
I can paint a picture for you in one thousand words.
I can even play ‘Paint it Black’ on air guitar for you
But every time I paint myself in a corner
I need you to pull me out.
“I am getting a half -Van Gogh,” I say over the phone.
“A half -Van Gogh? What is that?”
“You know how Van Gogh lopped off his left ear after a fit of madness, or so it’s claimed?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m getting half my left ear, the lobe lopped off.”
Silence.
“Why? Why would you do that?”
“It’s cancerous.”
“Oh dear.”
“You said you would love me even if I had half my face missing.”
“I know but …”
“Hello. Hello…”
Ring tone.
Whenever I feel a poem ‘coming on’
The images flickering before me like dragonflies
In sunlight, the sentences skittering off
In the distance, I feel like Cezanne bawling out
Vollard who kept falling asleep during a pose,
“Wretch! Stay still! You’re ruining everything.
You must hold your pose like an apple.”
John Malone 