Cafe Still Life

Of yesterdays' contemplations and decaying touches.
Beyond the glass pane at four corners
of the bustling intersection, lights red orange green; go.
go to. I affixed the stamp of your bedroom clutches, bareskin rushes
and wondered what the future holds, what it held.
Faith, a streaming swirl, caffeine cupped.
By what miracle that is each leap across ourselves to others! As angels
no longer terrify, now that they have found their gonads
in some safeboxes, in some large bank, (in some movie.) Do you remember how it happened?
How we willed and acted? How they delighted and auctioned their wings
on ebay? You'd lay me up and put me out
like a city on fire. But I'm still burning.
Burning the wooden chair, burning desires and bills:
I bought a latte, I bought muffins,
cupcakes, sandwiches, sodas, mints, conversations, artifice.
I even bought a bum.
Who ran away.
Beyond. Past. Though here I sit,
each inch of skin tingling; memories that have no source,
and no questions, inexplicably attached to a violence with no force.

©hRj 2007