The waitress chews her little finger, whilst concentrating on a foreign crossword, she's teaching herself Spanish. An older lady toils noisily somewhere unseen. A nervous couple play with cold pizza slices, authentic recipes. Two men sit apart on either side of a table, nursing small coffee cups; white stained with brown dribbles, strangely essential. People pass by outside with quick curious glances inside the café, they are not tempted to enter and so on they thunder amongst the city mad house traffic. The shy couple leave, oozing polite mumbles. Schoolboys pretend at work outside on the city street, drawing phallus's and breasts upon white sheets of paper resting upon blue clip boards, I can hear there raucous giggling; if I was young again I should giggle at the human body too. The old lady appears and begins clearing tables of the lunchtime debris, she's teaching herself humility. A writer writes alone in a corner to the sound of endless scribbling. Two talkative young ladies enter with a sullen friend enter enthused with fashions he'll never understand, autumn air about them, in leafs of scented purity, gossip and perfume, and life and sex. The third is pretty, modest of dress and charming with her dour melancholy. They order and sit by the window, chattering aimlessly like terrified cockatoo's in a pet shop window, lost to the great debate, some one has lost her lover.
-He is a pig, always was a pig. (The nervous other nods thoughtlessly)
-No he did love me!
-Shut up, he thought he was something special, with his books, always reading like it was some rare talent, idiot! (The other applauds with a smile)
-We both read, cuddling in bed at night, I liked that he read.
-Give over, reading is boring, he was a boring pig!
-Yeah a boring long haired piggy thing. (The other remarks whilst trembling at her blouse)
-No one reads like he does.
-You'll meet another; good riddance is what I say. (The trembler nods affirmatively)
-You are wrong today; no one will love me like he did.
-Shut up, come out tonight with the girls and we'll find someone for you.
-We'll find someone for you. (The wild eyes trembler remarks)
-No, I shall remain in bed.
These three girls beautiful in different ways, colossus minds jousting for unknowable reasons, like classical beauties they have no sympathy and they dissect frailties with the careless abandon of an eager surgeon. In this age of dread and sickening arrogance I become sick and arrogant. Talking pigeon gossip, sex and fashion, endless word formations, the structure of their speech is unfathomable and yet magnificent to the poetic ear.
The two men eye the girls nervously; what lust is hidden there I can only guess at eyes with their whispering techniques, it is best not to move your lips, hushed words are secretive, do not move your lips. The waitress mutters something in Spanish to herself and seems pleased with the results, the old lady reproaches her with silent glances, and she delivers two milky coffee's and a hot chocolate, the dour girl thanks her and they exchange rare things, as too sweet things to the too feminine girls are placed down gently. The smoke from the coffee could be nicotine smoke; the marsh mallows on the hot chocolate could be deflated parachutes I write from my knowing corner. From the quiet voyeuristic eye even Jesus can be known, in simple proverbs "¦Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets¦ and I stare at the dark haired girl as she stirs her hot chocolate with a spoon, beside the loud plumage of her two twittering song bird friends. I should rescue every dour beauty in the world, and behold a harem of silent intellectuals drinking hot chocolate and peering sadly into the fathomless depths of their swirling marsh mallows.
There is nothing that the eye does not know, they drink in between words and consume the sugar of speech, the entrance bell tangles, and an man enters peering about sullenly, he is wet from the sudden rain outside. He is a dripping and bedraggled augury, a mortality of some incredible affect and the serenity is lost on no one, as the sudden sun flitters through the windows upon the clean tables. We'll never tire of the thing we learn from other people's café conversations. He sits and waits for the old lady to attend to him, sudden cordial familiarity.
-Hello Harold, usual me darling? She titters softly, standing to his side, eyeing his dampen face warmly.
-Caught in the rain again! He mumbles.
-Were you caught in the rain?
-The usual would be lovely! He mumbles.
The waitress forces her personality into the serene world of the lonely scribbler; hacking at his silence she delivers words from her own mind. It was tea, yes I did order tea, but I'm in no hurry. She evolves into something monstrous as he sits before her, impossible silence, a daunting nerve tearing pause that takes its own breathless time too seriously. Earnest waitresses consume the airs of other souls; vampyric, pruned and always somewhere else.
'Words are precious things' later he would accredit this to himself yet he will never be certain if indeed she the Spanish knowing waitress did not say it, in a rare moment of insight and foresight. The old lady is eyeing him friendly and the years drop from her face, as words do not creep from his tongue, there are limitless ways to pass away the worlds too few days. The trio of girls tinkle and clank as they muster ingredients; sprinkling chocolate flakes, an extra sugar cube, some more milk. The dark haired solemnity glances in shy ways about the café, and if she has seen him he knows it and she realises her own capture. Sometimes the eyes of a beauty cause me to deteriorate into jabbering nonsense, it is at once feared and excitable lust. You share a thousand glances in a day with a thousand going someplace others and still you dare not speak. How like paintings people are to the mordant mind, these representative words of sensations and how we tire of those exhibits; to grab them by the waist, and cradle her oval portrait face in my hand, to caress lip sullen to lip entwined in sudden gasps of careless bravery. But no one can and so the two men leave thinking identical lusts as him, and the man who sits alone drink's his tea alone. I wondered down dark exclusive thoughts which behave as corridors, past faces and memories that lurk and dance without motion or rhyme in neat oak linings of oil and vanishing points. Which means I think and therefore go back to memories like Bacchus in a café, a chorus of ill dressed irregulars avoiding each others eyes but greedily imbibing their lazy words, as the satyr arrives avoiding the rain like every Harold I have never spoken to. Wild mother frenzy has she rips her own sons flesh to cadaverous slices, spell bound he is a lion cub, wavering manically in the willow branches, an established reference deep within a classic café scene; I do not speak to that are dark haired beauty because she behaves like a matriarch; stern and unknowable yet illicitly desirable. He smiles at his own pointless verbosity, the dark dour beauty smiles too. Great epic none understandings as she blushes and he blushes too. It feels like a mother caressing my shy boyish hair after some sporting achievement, all the women I have ever never known come back to me in claustrophobic guises; sashaying the sex bop, hop skip boogie of mother and I thrown trembling into obnoxious hatred and curling lip boy hood nastiness.
In this wan cafe of windfall whispers and stale forgotten coffee cups, I walk and taste the air of nothing sounds. Sounds like city jabber and unfocused diatribe, sounds like wet feet cautious and reluctant to go creaking over wooden tiles, I know these memories. Here amongst the chatter gods I hear the croon and swoon of a once slumberous coffin thing. Times of revelation "¦Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter¦ and sacred scripture is coming to an end for the son as become a dead lion and the end times are swift upon us. She caresses her own features with his mind, in the broken mirrors of that space which separates eye balling strangers. So almost comfortably now she ignores the parakeets by the drizzle window and plays at knowing the apparition in the corner; from himself now she desires into his self skin and her hot thigh adoration; undulating the ooze and grime of love making. She fidgets and sweats into her fabric by thigh, and how adorable the aroused become sudden and ferocious. Not dull days or café days, doubt anyone anymore because it would be here if that were so.
Sudden grey clouds outside turn the light and now all inside look partially unwell grey and forgivable he will if she will. We could make love if but our tongues were longer; long enough to go searching the length of wild and pure feral legs and still those children pretending at work in the cold swish swishing of a blue school tie. Which can become a noose in the obsessed mind of diabetic red haired freckled little one; my hands make landscapes in the dirty air, and I am kneeling now before Nineveh's septic alter, here where fur incisors gnaw away at the thick plaster ceilings. De robe and caress, de robe and caress the fruits of distracted attraction. I grin at myself and she grins too. Now Faustian wonder and stygian corridors internal dialogue about morality and so my words come from the debris machine of my indulgent cafe hours before work, this cog and spanner of narrative that has been left to rot in some romantic gothic prose. I try to imagine how she could communicate to me and it appears as it always has been impossible.
The tea is placed upon the table, a small curvy white enamel pot with smooth ivory handles. There is also a rotund ugly steel pot, no edges and too little symmetry. Also there is a squat milk pot, a thin white cup and a dish, plus a grey steel strangler of a miniature madness he'll never comprehend in this sick and corrodible end.
