On The Even Side Of Affairs (Pretty long, so click wisely please)

Part I

“The thing he berates me on constantly,
is how I watch Benny’s eyes. He says
I should be looking at his paws
to evaluate the movements and correct him.”
Regal?
The hum grew and stretched over the pavillion,
droned away; a voice caught
in a bottle, dying as seconds do.
Such a quiet death.
I chuckled softly,
for the matter would be years away,
in time.
In such short time...

Speeches on the even side of affairs,
while walking, sitting by lamplight
or by shaded elms,
there are an infinity.
No one sensed me.
“I don’t understand,
but I want to know.”
The difference between ignorance
and stupidity.
I say, no one is ever there.
                               Hope whispers, stirs silence,
                               so the ghosts of them
                               May speak their volumes.

If ‘if’s and ‘but’s’ were candy and nuts...
Etcetera from pursed lips.
A metaphor, hazy,
clung around my neck; a garland.
Ashes blew away, for there are more to come.
In time.
In such short time.

Part II

There was a fat man, balding,
with a low hung moon
in each of his amorous eyes.
He opened his mouth,
pushed breath
towards whatever–
the mountains in Tibet,
and I could smell his mother’s tears.

Cry cry cry me a river, smooth
like deadpan faces.
“I don’t really expect her to take me back,
not while I’m at the bottom. Can’t stop though,
can’t stop, you see? It’s too hard.”
Yes
Yes
and help me, please
help me!

It’s an act of contrition,
but there is no solace here,
where a thin layer of despair grows
thicker every hour,
and five o’clock shadows are tended
like a horticultural nightmare.

One starts and another
and another:
I–I–I–I–i–i–i–i....
Like wolves singing odes to the Carpathian Mountains.

Wie mir, auch Wie

The German ale was adequate;
I ordered a glass, “Clean, if you don’t mind,”
and drank sparingly,
for there was inebriation in the company already.
Too much for my taste, but it was a frugal divulgence.
A sixpence evening, as they say.

I sat separate, self contained, enigmatic
and blase.
If one or two wobbled towards me
on their planks of wood,
or spoke slurred rambles,
I would nod and smile and appease.
So nice...so empathetic.
Not a flick of the wrist (Shoo fly–shoo!)
Did I give to send them
back to the places where they wept and cried
laughter to a slaughtered soliloquy.
A toast! A toast to the wasteland
that became of them.

Part III

Spring came like a gasp one morning,
and I sat on a bench,
listening to the flow of speeches
on the even side of affairs
while I nibbled at my croissant,
and dodged the idea of having an idea.
A woman sat next to me
and her dog–a rueful, shaggy bulk of wet fur
that sloughed its breath in gales–sat itself
imploringly at my feet.
The woman was a well kempt aristocrat,
purely sentimental, the item–the living carpet–
on her leash.

Moments passed.
The croissant from Kaufer’s dangled
from my fingertips.
Was I being rude?
Was I?

Cough
I ate.
Cough
I blinked.
The dog whined.

Ahem!
I ate.
“Excuse me,” Her voice was like a miracle
performed by a heretic, “would you mind moving
to the other bench while you eat that? Terribly sorry.”
I looked.
The dog barked, a sound that would
collapse a house of cards from six miles away.
The woman stared.
I laughed, high and haughty.

“No madam, I mind not at ALL!”
Getting up, I dropped the croissant
on the slick cobbled street that glistened
in the fresh morning light,
ground it with my heel,
and strode away, grinning
from nipped ear to nipped ear.
The dog ate.
The woman gasped.

I went back to Kaufer’s
for a cup of coffee and a croissant.
Their croissants are always so delectable.