Aphelion Issue 292, Volume 28
March 2024
 
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The Poet as Voyeur
or
I Can’t Believe I JUST HEARD THAT

by Richard Tornello


Another Starbucks morning.
Faces blank before their tasks.
Sitting, drinking coffee, latté
or
some commercially foisted grime.

A known quantity enters, coupled?
All quite proper with respect.
exGirl friend, daughter and the guy,
six foot, more than less.
His back to me, I watch, and listen, as he
proposes questions dark and deep,
to his daughter sitting there
her look…a clean blank sheet.
Trust me here I’m not kidding.
Cause Pink Floyd would want to beat me, with a brick,
were this not in total, oh I’m not kidding , all for sooth.
More than one time, and more than two.
The interrogatory repeated said in which:

“How can you use your cell phone
If you don’t eat your sand-wich?”

No, I’m not kidding.
I couldn’t believe, my brain just spun.
This is true as the earth revolves, round the setting sun.
His question was as dumb as turds.
His girlfriend looks away, sees me staring, eyes so wide with wonderment.
And gives me a shrug, as in what a day!
Maybe that’s the reason for their break up.
Cause he’s such a mental slug.
Big and dumb he comes across
with what he has to say.

I still can’t believe what I heard that morning on said day
and pondered this poem’s writing for a time,
not sure of how to reason or to rhyme.
Cause at our local Starbucks, it’s never too sublime.


© 2011 Richard Tornello

Find more by Richard Tornello in the Author Index.

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