Becoming a Regular

there's some defining silence
in this place, filled with long
neglected books, and antique
furniture, most likely donated.

there's beauty in the solace,
it's impossible not to notice.
what, with all the old retired
hipsters, clinging to youth

and the laptop portals, granting
audience with the earth, with
the flow of mighty humanity,
all awful awe and access.

you can taste it in the coffee,
a kind of quiet solitude that
seems mandatory, among
such glorious constituents

to whom should I ascribe?
there is twain and Tolstoy
there's Homer and Hemmingway
there's a handful of Lewises

but then there is that other
soul, that brilliant lunatic
making claims about him
self, Son of God, he calls it

and I think I hear him whisper
through the silence, and
the coffee, through the books
on the shelfs, through the

thrift store art lining unfinished
walls, through the bright red
jacket, the unkept brown hair
the mustaches, long neglected.

but to buy it all, is far too much
to consider, all that nonsense
about giving and others and
love. it's bologna, it has to be.


but the silence seems convincing
there is so much death to run
from, and so much to embrace.
He seems to say, "embrace it."