After reading Philip Larkin & Café Nihiliste
by Sonja A Skarstedt
[ poetry - november 02 ]
After reading Philip Larkin
The crowd's face, sullen in the crouched afternoon
contemplates the curdled promises they left
miles back in the early hours.
One man in an oversized trenchcoat
snuffles through the rain and mumbles to himself
that his wife has pushed his life beyond unbearable.
Meanwhile in some obscure bingo hall, his wife
in the middle of mingling, tells her gaming partner
that marriage will always be her major regret.
Thirty miles away, in a Lancashire pub at quitting time
her husband catches an ale with his cronies
whose tales of domestic horror equal his own;
he raises his glass to the barmaid
whose rampant cleavage ensures
that each ale slides down
more smoothly than the last,
makes him wonder why all women aren't alike.
En route back from bingo his wife buys some steak,
makes eyes at the butcher's helper
and sighs all the way home on the train.
Later that evening, in their cramped living room she inquires,
"rough day dear?" to which he replies as he always does,
that today was the roughest day of all, and as she places
his dinner on the table, her damp hand
swipes the wrinkles from her thigh.
Maragogype of lost luxuries,
Wendell builds rhapsodies
on the art of inhalation
in this shrine where he spends
the majority of his waking hours:
calculates the milkfroth
on bowls of au lait -
watches customers' eyes
as they lick the last bubbles
from their mugs of cappuccino,
knowing their growing obsession
will soon equal his own
as he sweeps leftover gold
across the scoured brick floor
and more accurately than a connoisseur
presses Guatemala, Honduras
Sumatra
Java
Colombia
Peru
Argentina and Kenya AA
between his hands,
and when he drops boiling water on a mountain
of fresh-ground Kalossi
each elusive mocha trace
black
erudite
expands -
erotic as a witch's brew until the climax
more spectacular than fireworks
numbs his senses.
