Cafe'

My metro stopped (metro buses are absolutely packed in Mexico City, people really don’t want to be late.  Once a guy dove through the doors horizontally and onto a lady).  A beauty met my eyes I looked at her up and down and up finally keeping her gaze safe behind the glass.  I started smiling.  She did.  Laughed even, if I remember correctly.  The doors were closing I glanced at them.  My heart was going.  I wondered what was happening.  The apathetic driver started the bus and she raised her hand for me.  Bent four fingers at me in a little wave.  A real ghost.  I see her outline in my head. 

I'm writing at a coffee shop.  This pretty girl is packing up.  I need a coffee.  I don’t want to be jumpy though.  Wait for some eye contact...There!  My lips are chapped.  She looks Jewish.  I've been tinkering about Jewish people a lot recently.  Her acne is appealing for some reason.  Wearing spandex.  Sex in the bathroom under that first God.

The cashier is pretty too.  Skinny.  Doesn’t smile too much.  I could tell her I look at cloud formations with the seriousness of a car accident.  Maybe write that down, slide it across the counter and wink at her.  Who knows what she might say.

One time I fell asleep on the bus and a pretty high school girl shook me awake.  We were in a poor neighborhood on a steep hill.  She had on a short plaid skirt.  Long, tanned legs.  Coin-sized ankles.  While we waited I wrote this poem called “Dialysis” in one go watching birds hop around on the sidewalk.

I knew a little bird once.
The little round type
That hops around.

He lay in a hospital bed
For months
Waiting for a healthy kidney.
When he got a new one,
The meds he was taking
Fucked him up so bad

He got an infection
In his brain and
He died.

The next morning,

My father paced
The sidewalk before first light.

I walked by.

He glanced at me,
Stuttered once,

Twice,
Then flew away.

Eventually I lost my patience and started walking.  There was a dead construction worker lying in the middle of the road.  The birds landing all around him. 

There it was: 

"cars crept up and down the hill, blinded drivers honked at the backs of buses, the man's orange helmet created a protective ring around itself on the sidewalk"

And there were birds everywhere.  

I pay for my coffee silently and pretend to look at something by my hands when the barista's eyes near mine.  I think about the clouds briefly in the marble counter and the rain where coffee beans come from.  The humidity somehow being released in the coffee.  If I had the guts I'd tell her my father passed away when I was only five and show her my poem.

I've never told anyone but "Dialysis" is a rip-off of a John Lennon poem called

"I Sat Belonely".

"I sat belonely down a tree,
humbled fat and small.
A little lady sing to me
I couldn't see at all.

I'm looking up and at the sky,
to find such wondrous voice.
Puzzly, puzzle, wonder why,
I hear but I have no choice.

'Speak up, come forth, you ravel me',
I potty menthol shout.
'I know you hiddy by this tree'.
But still she won't come out.

Such sofly singing lulled me sleep,
an hour or two or so
I wakeny slow and took a peep
and still no lady show.

Then suddy on a little twig
I thought I see a sight,
A tiny little tiny pig,
that sing with all it's might

'I thought you were a lady',
I giggle,-well I may,
To my surprise the lady,
got up-and flew away."