Starbucks and Cookie
STARBUCKS AND COOKIE
I sit in Barnes and Noble
Looking at the figure-display over the snack bar
Oh how out-of-place in time they look
Twain
Shaw
Hardy
Dickinson
Hemingway
Have read them all
Out of time
The artist has caught them from middle-to-old age
Twain the Mississippi observer
older than the river
that flame-gray hair
nose-slipping specs
cigar
Shaw the same snowy mass
but older than creation
he contemplates the infinite
Hardy stirs a cup of tea
has just exclaimed
“Wha! Pshaw!
Jude isn’t as sad as that.”
Emily?
Emily sits for an artist
she has a sweater tied round her neck-
those drooping slender shoulders
always protected
but from what no one knows
Hemingway
what’s to say?
he be da man
smokes his pipe
thinking about the slaughter of ‘brave bulls’
“Good fight!” says Ernie
assigning some sort of ludicrous intelligence
There are several more
But I’ll leave them in their mothballs
The question arises
at least in my mind arises
Given their various outlook
would they earn a high place in today’s world?
I doubt it
None of them play guitar or saxophone
The drummer they moved to had an unbelievable
subtleness
I imagine they could get through a work
without need for a dripping drooling bedroom scene
And then why watch anyone use the lavatory?
They obviously didn’t know how to burn film
didn’t need to burn time
Call it imagination
Call it intelligence
Call it sanity!
Copyright © Daver Austin | Year Posted 2010
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