A 4:24 Selectric

At the coffee club

I asked for your core

Like Quasimodo or Frankenstein

(Although I was really like the 1931 Bela Lugosi

Count Dracula, vampire of Transylvania).

You turned your eyes like an actress in Japan,

Then closed them and held them closed tensely,

And I assumed you were thinking of a polite way to quickly say:

“I’m so sorry.  I couldn’t do that,”

As if you had searched on Google

For a polite way to reject a hapless suitor.

But you opened your eyes and said: “Yes, sure, let’s do that,”

As if you meant it.

Picking up your coffee pot,

Which is big like cement trucks,

You smiled and said: “I’ll call.  When should I call?”

Then you turned for the kitchen in the stupid dense night.

I was not manic insane like the Crazy Fuckin’ Mexicans

Or a pomegranate or Akira Kurosawa.

Strangely, I was calm,

And I assumed there is real God in all this

Or in the quarter or half or full moon,

Or in the center of the sun, or in comets.

I sang silly into my head: “Now, stand up for the bastard coffee club,”

Even though I no longer drink the stuff

Because of my incessant high blood pressure.

As if a little drunk on vodka or gin again,

I left, and I took the stairs and the black January 25^th air,

And I took my car, and I rolled along Russell Road at 25 mph as if in Paris.

Now two silent days later at 4:24 in a purposeless morning,

Dreaming on some master painter’s muse,

I type slippery words into my perfect typewriter,

An old and black IBM Selectric.