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.
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- Disclosure
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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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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Yay! Good. 🙂
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Bit late Jamie! Many things on my mind the last few weeks!
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No problem,Colin. I hope everything is okay.
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Everything is rather more than OK thanks, Jamie! Been focussing on Musical Composition recently. A few of my musical offerings can be found on Soundcloud. Just Google my name + Soundcloud!
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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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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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That close is memorable Colin!
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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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Hi Jamie, Got something together. Please read at https://reneejustturtleflight.com/2017/09/17/rainbow-laced-muses. Thank You.
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Will do.
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I like your poem for the prompt Jamie. The poems coming in have unique takes as well. I do not go out much these days so will wait for the next prompt on Wednesday. Metta
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This one was just written from memory as my poems often are. Are you game to try that or write a fiction from imagination.
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Have to give it some thought but maybe I can dream something up. 😉 My memory sometimes is very good and others not so much. Have a bit of a head cold from great granddaughter Klaudya.
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Rest then. Feel better.
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Thank You.
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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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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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Indeed yes. Well done, Sonja.
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Did you have other poems for this, Sonia. The heading says “my first response” but I don’t see any others. Did I miss something? Don’t want to leave anything out.
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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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Paul, would you send your first response again. I don’t see it here. Thanks! Happy day to you.
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Will do
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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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🙂
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