The Lives of Strangers

Black square tabletops hover
Over splotchy sunlight on a tile floor.
Backs of strangers rest
Against dark wooden slats.

Conversations over laptops:
Late afternoon’s soft light falls
Past murmurs of chatter.
Headphone-hugged eardrums,
Showered by strains of the grinder’s grumbling,
Bend toward inky pages.

Sweet warmth wets silent lips
Quietly inhaling the scent of
Coffee,
Cheese soup,
And companionship.
One woman is an island
Filling her chest with the lives of strangers
On black satellites
In one softly lit constellation.

Tossed Together

Cork popped; swirl; sniff; sip.
Delicious. The bottle is tipped again
And again . . .
Until empty. And lonesome.
One last glance of appreciation
And then . . .
Tossed aside.

Liquid black ice, moving, shimmering;
A shining sliver between dark, heaving clouds
Breaks onto the rolling waves, whitecaps, wind-blown athwart.
Water crashes over piers: billows and spray consuming
Where tourists once strolled,
High-fiving rocks, and pulled back out to sea . . .

To the center, the womb, the sweet jelly filling:
Ruby red, intoxicating Freedom.
There to swell like a muscle, caressed with love --
Tossed together.

On the Extinction of Blackboards and the Advent of Parking Tickets

A blackboard, asphalt
Thick lines of yellow
Hem us in

Extinct in the schoolhouse:
No more strokes of cursive lines
Repeated in punishment

Just tracks of tires
Rolled into place
Orderly, Regulated, Safe

Until, like a rebellious serif,
One wheel takes root across the line.
A defiant stroke not to be quelled
By a ruler to the hand or a hand to ruled lines

Instead, a hastily scrawled slip of paper,
A curse, an empty pocket book:
New punishment on a new blackboard.