coffee house interlude

The half-empty coffee cups of contemplation,
newspapers like the shields of chivalrous knights,
the sea of words, the brays, the nonsense,
Lacan and Freud and cliché and the usual bullshit.

And there she sits, another cliche...a flower
a curse
the relentless metaphor
the Joycean stream, the Proustian digression
the pause in the pause
the catch of breath
the harbinger of death
the icicle forming drip by drip
and there she sits.

And theory fiercely claws at form
and the blood of reputations splashes
in the fresh-washed ring,
in the q & a and pun and witty jabs
of the gladiators clad in flannel and wool.

And in the vortex, in the bowels of the storm
there she sits, and sits, and sits, and...
well, you get the rest.



R. R. Shea