Sunday evenings at the coffee shop,
on an off-road from the downtown square,
a haven for the anonymous, and lingering ghosts,
a pool of stale air and lights buzzing like moths.

I like to spend these nights,
sitting across from an empty seat,
elbows resting on a naked table,
hospital clean if you exclude
the rim stain from my coffee cup.

I lower my eyes as strangers flicker past,
avoiding conversation is key.

And all I need is to hear their voices
muffle into everything else:
the shrieking car alarm, the bubbling espresso machine, the drunken university students,
clamour folding into one,
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz -

My internal film, a soundtrack:
segments of footsteps flickering
with the traffic,
while I piece strips
of life together, content
to sit alone in this coffee shop,
poised like a loaded gun
within a two foot range of my target -waiting.

Taking Off Edie Sedgwick’s Clothes

First, her earrings shaped like chandeliers,
unclasping one by one and
placed within her ivory jewellery box.

And her black beret,
pulling static from her hair.

Then her long cotton leotard, a more timely matter,
as her dark sleeves inched off her shoulders,
tugging the supple cloth down her thighs
until it sat in a clumsy pool beneath her feet,
while my fingers lingered at her toes.

You will want to know
that she was leaning against a factory wall,
smoking, with a child-like grin,
counting the cold tiles on the floor,
kicking the cotton leotard from her body.

The satin feel of a woman’s pair of stockings,
is something to be savoured,
and I proceeded in perverse expectation,
peeling layers from her hips, her legs, and her pink ankles,
unwrapping the shell from her body,
until I finally reached her.

Later, I wrote in a notebook,
that she was like a Rock’n’Roll Goddess,
but of course, I cannot tell you everything –
the way her breath stunk from cigarettes,
how her words spilled like asphalt
every time we spoke.

All I can tell you is
that the fake city
lights shone through the window
and made her skin a translucent shade of green,
so when I tried to see her body,
naked as she was,
all I had was the outline of her neon silhouette,
her white bones,
and her still face,
like kissing a cold statue.