Modern Coffee House--Written In Situ
I see myself in the humid
smoky dark of a 1950s coffeehouse
with a demitasse on a cracked
plate that no chinamaker
would ever call a saucer,
sipping the dusky brew and
listening with maybe a gentle
tap of pen on paper as the poet
beats out wave after wave
of anguish, disgust, anger.
Flash to reality--and I'm
here at McDonald's with a mess
of undigestable, most half-eaten
ends and fringes of things,
picking up more trash than any one
human could produce (but much less
than the average child's quota)
waiting for my boy to go down
the pink slide. And you know,
the thought of the one is so much better,
but the reality of the pink slide--unbeatable.© 2003 Steven Riddle
