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he’s a tumbleweed

this rootless man

moving

like a migrating bird

changing cities
as easily as another might
switch coffee mugs or find a new cafe
with a different baker for pastries and
a different source for roasted beans

as if life

might change

at a new address
or on the single quaff of a new brew

as if he could find himself
in the company of strangers,
of unknown neighbors
sitting at anonymous tables
in silent camaraderie with
smart phones and tablets

he sits, stares

looking past – not at – his iPad

a woman walks by, shoots a smile
into the dark heart of his alienation

he receives it
like a dying man receives chest compression,
a jump-start to his imagination and he could
envision her that night, looking at the same
moon, mooning over the same stars and
revisiting dreams once thought dead

© 2015, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; photo courtesy of Moss Will under CC BY  (attribution) 3.0 license

Cafés are wonderful places to observe human behaviour and the human condition as people visit, hold meetings, take a break, write, sit lonely or peacefully in the noise and crowd.  Paint a word portrait in prose or poem of someone you noted and remember from a recent visit to a neighborhood café. If you feel comfortable, please share your response – or a link to it – in the comments below. All shared work will be featured here next Tuesday.

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

26 Comments

  1. yeah that’s literature, literature is the thing that takes the neologisms of our life and puts them into writing, like it’s literature because you used the term iPad and that’s new in the body of the corpus of language of literature, and quite frankly it’s literature also if you are expanding the language and making it more useful

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  2. Here is my response to the prompt:

    One pub too many

    In my high school years
    I was addicted to one pub
    Every day around six p.m.
    I would take the dog out
    The dog was the pretext of course
    The pub was across the park, nearby the lake
    His owner was like a brother to me
    His entire family was my family for awhile
    Their harmony, their happiness
    Were my refuge
    I was safe there in that glass pub
    Soon enough I became a student
    New places to explore
    The pub on the top of the National Theatre
    The pub of the University of Architecture, this one was more a club
    For playing cards, all sort of games
    The pub of the Literature University
    Placed underground, with black oiled walls
    We divided fairly our time between those three
    I would start my day with a coffee in the Literature’ pub
    Puff my cigarette while studying faces
    The smoke would burn my eyes
    But in that quasi darkness no one would notice
    Lucky strike, no filters or some Romanian stuff, equally strong
    I would always forget my lighter
    So asking for a light would start a friendship
    Next, at noon
    Me and my friends would visit the Architecture’s pub
    There the students were taller
    Handsomer, intriguing
    Here we would take our lunch
    Being a far more light full place
    And in the evenings, when some money grew in our pockets
    We would join the roof crowd
    On the top of The National Theatre
    Where crème de la crème would meet
    One or two pints of beer would grant the effort
    When broke or during the exams
    The nearby pub will greet us at 3 a.m. in the morning
    What else but a beer to fixate your knowledge
    Or to provide a blissful sleep
    I wasn’t picky
    Whatever would come first
    Very soon the school was over
    Life stuck its teeth on us
    Devoured by our duties and responsibilities
    We can afford only fast food restaurants now
    Just before movie starts
    The animation movie, 3D
    With its special glasses that cover an
    Underground slumber

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        1. Okay. Will do. That sounds good. You know the theme for the October Zine is music. Do you have anything written that you’d like to submit? You can leave me the link and I can check it out.

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  4. when we look at another person

    forgetting for the moment that they
    might be looking at us in the same way –
    all those behavioural manifestations –
    do we not impute to them
    a kind of completion settled composure
    compounded of what we take to be
    definite things – arrangements of thought
    intellectual substructure of identity & feeling?

    take anybody you imagine you know
    however they might be in themselves
    do you not see a certain settledness
    of body & mind spirit & dalliance
    towards the world? look how they move
    with dignity or resolve or shuffle their feet
    with an uncertainty they might overcome
    suddenly with intention direction & purpose

    and how do they see you
    mirror of themselves hearing about them
    arranging a Bruckner symphony
    for a hundred recorder-players?
    like the man in the roadside café
    I’d never met before
    and am never likely to meet again
    told me he’d just done

    it’s all a matter of gaze
    and the content thereof

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  5. Hi Jamie !Here is my first response –

    #O!The Cafe Owner#
    O !the rural cafe owner
    Let me enjoy the blinding heavenly light
    The accompanied whistling winds
    I-a tumbleweed has ushered
    your cafe
    To pleasure an eternal liquor ,beer or wine of love
    Let me escape from the crustfallen life
    A chain of of diurnal routine
    Let me recline at the front porch of your tavern
    Enjoying a dirge quiescence
    Let me exempt from the bricks and mortar ,chimney bellflower and clamorous clarion
    O ! the rural cafe owner
    Let me fly away from the anguish intolerable
    May it be just for few moments
    But I would sip the red wine of the loveable apple
    Forever …….
    Kakali Das Ghosh

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  8. My first response:

    Reminds

    herself to use her legs when pulling out weeds so she don’t get pain in her back

    aggravated by weight of cat litter bags she puts in her tartan shopping trolley

    when she meets her friend Flora in town
    to share a tuna salad homemade

    by Sully the African refugee in the local cafe.

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  9. Thanks Jamie. First response….

    ..among the small things yesterday..

    was a larger thing, not world news, happily,
    not somethinhg to chew over.

    amongst the colours, the gifts, the tiny cup,
    cracked, collectable, among the people
    at the friday club is friendship, a bigger
    thing.

    quarry cafe.

    although many of us like smaller items,
    we have grown to know that close friends
    are a quite very big, important thing in a
    life. small life.

    sbm.

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  10. Hi Jamie,

    My third response

    Sausage

    roll flaky pastry diagnostics.
    Watch your stop motion self

    on cafe CCTV dance on chessboard
    squares black and white faux marbled

    floor. Reflection in glass as check your hair over fresh baguettes or bottled citrus.

    “Don’t You Want Me, Baby” pumped
    over speakers amid oven beeps and bleeps.

    Blow on Sausage roll for barefoot baby
    strapped in pram for the ride of its life.

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  11. Hi Jamie,

    Here is my second response:

    Bairns Are Old Codgers

    Before I get taken to play at my soft playcentre,
    my one year granddaughter toddles with her zimmer frame.

    Later we will take her to the memory cafe 
    where she’ll remember her past lives.

    “Hard”, of before dawn and midnight hours:
    A welder in the Clyde shipyard, 1942.

    “Stinks that,” she says of the steel shavings, and Swarfega. 
    “Heavy”, of the hammer…

    A kitchen servant in a big house. 
    “Hurts”, of calloused pestle and mortared deferment…

    I’m all giddy at tumble down
    slides, scramble nets and ballpools.

    From

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Thank you!