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the glorious smoking section

by Gabriel Ricard

That dress is never going to land,
but it’s still eleven p.m.,
and I was already out of that strange diner
in that strange part of town.

Strange and strange alike,
but it’s more or less familiar to me.

Figure that out.

The retired detectives, comeback masterminds,
sports legends and spiritual hit men
say it was built over the last honest church
to be immortalized in a lost rock and roll song.

I don’t know about all that. I just like
that it’s a great place to drink coffee
and wait for the bastard who used magic tricks
to steal your chair to inevitably show up.

This place doesn’t see a lot of tourists,
so it’s always amazing that someone
could ever be that stupid.

It might be all those animated epics
that seem to be happening in real-time
because the news is just too damn depressing
and nature had to do something
about all that despair from the man on the streets.

They don’t wanna talk about it.
They just want to come around here
and get four scrambled eggs with Texas Pete
for every two shots of Old Crow from that waitress
who works for tips so she can get her sixty-year-old son
out of that honor system prison by Christmas.

I’ve been here to hide out from the women
who come down from the city and then flip out a little
when they realize what I look like under good light.

I’ve also been here to work off the last medical crisis
and to laugh at jokes I heard the last time I stopped in.

It’s a good place. There’s a rock and roll song for it
that’s not quite lost yet. The right station, the right spasm
of gravity and some kind of unseasonable weather,
and it’ll come through like it’s 1982 all over again.

From what I’ve heard and seen on the walls of gas stations
and eternal garage sales there was a lot more to do back then.

You could even tell people apart on a rainy night.

Mostly though
I come here because it only takes a couple of hours,
a few cups of coffee, a few beers to pass by enough time.

Because when enough time passes
I know it’ll be possible to pay my bill,
tell the waitress I like what she’s done with her wig
and go back outside.

I don’t have to wonder what’s going to happen next.
There’s always a friend to pull up around front
and get me into the next couple of weeks
with minimal suffering and a surprising amount of style.

09/12/2010

Posted on 09/12/2010
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Ken Harnisch on 09/13/10 at 08:27 PM

I knew this place. It was called Kane's Diner, was habitat for the denizens of both long nights out and mornings yet to come and served the best greasy slop on the planet, including dishwater under the guise of clam chowder. And oh the players who tramped through the door and up on the stage of the bizarre! Thanks, Gabriel, for awakening one of the memories I don't mind conjuring every now and again

Posted by Paul Lastovica on 09/14/10 at 02:42 AM

night owls are an odd bunch of people; i suspect you spend or have spent much time in/with that crowd. I miss the night shift, being out of rotation with the rest of this side of the world.

Posted by Morgan D Hafele on 09/19/10 at 12:05 AM

in a way this makes me miss the old life, in a way, i don't know if i could ever really go back to it, the familiarity would be there, but i think it would feel like i was just visiting...

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