Flat White Afternoon

Forget about

it for you’ll

never win,

never hit the jackpot,

move in

to a solar-powered eco mansion

and modest

philanthropy,

become a panjandrum

of diaphanous pleasures

but must sink

or swim

beneath mood-

mutable skies, coconut

milk clouds,

in the shadow of high flats,

low sales, bright fronts,

strung crowds

of literally miraculous

people in

expensive skin

like bed sheets

you would wrap yourself in

and which you now touch

lightly as you enter

this café

past a clutch

of mitching schoolgirls

with pierced noses

and Tintin

hairdos who look

at you as if to say

is it dial-a-dickhead

day in here?

or maybe that’s aimed instead

at the guy eating flatbread

with five thousand

friends on his phone

who types with a grin

all is well with the world,

when all is not well with the world —

the burden of debt

as your granny might say

heavy as sin —

although who would begrudge

this incense

of crushed coffee in steam

this clatter and chatter

latex flowers under halogen lights

and who’d demean

that woman

with her small child wiping

the small child’s chin

to the delight of a lonely

well-off older person

or w.o.o.p. —

I believe they call them

woopies — at the next

table over who scoops

two shaking spoons

of sugar into a steaming

cup then begins

to call her son

Oh my lost Son

asking after her granddaughter

while the mitching girls

swagger out the door

— look, one forgot her

phone — ah good,

someone caught her —

and who would begrudge the yin

and yang of this moment

sitting here

coming or going

anyone and no one

here or somewhere else

stuck nowhere and flowing

in the mix like everyone

for you are blurring

below indigo and ink-dim

skies as time passes

by like steam vapors into

the run-of-the-mill gray

coat you put on

pausing, before leaving

to meet this falling day

which as your granny

might say is the only

day you’re in.

Source: Poetry (September 2015)