Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Breakfast Date


Breakfast Date


Pipe music sprayed from a yellow grate above me,
painted so from years of bacon mist.
Sounds played hastily so I would not linger.
Hands overfilled my coffee cup—the napkin dam breached.
Those detergent-poor fingers—ringed with chrome
to masquerade scars from flame’s saliva.
Red hands connecting arms with wadded hairs—
Seared so from years of eggs over easy.
Beyond scarred elbows I could not see—
Do abused arms end beyond chambray sleeves?
My eyes not rising above my chest—they are fixed on menu lines
that speak so eloquently of Pigs Inside Blankets.

Coffee stirred with pen swirl like rings of summer typhoons.
Waterspouts reaching for truth beneath grounds,
finding but Lennox China as its dead-end tale.
An arm bumped my chair—streaming coffee beside the ribbon of my tie.
'Twas but a hurried man—mud caked boots stamping mosaic prints
in paint that was Friday’s catsup.

No. Miss Helen would not be here by this hour—Nor any other tick of twelve.
I am vacant. Like those times I waited before—when my answer machine lied.

* * *


"Breakfast Date" is a winner of Hawkeye Publishing's Wordhammer Award
(C) Copyright 2001 by the author, Lad Moore