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 25th 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.