@ The Cafe (II) Poem by Bob Holman

No lights! No city!
You've got to start nowhere
I'll take it, just to give it back
Surprise silence
By the continuation
Of silence
Perhaps you will notice nothing
Is the continuation of something
Waiting for us to catch up with its intention
Which is, "not to mention"
What I mentioned until -
Still waiting?
Hating waiting? Creating a debating syntax
To relax the cracks before the quake shakes
Whatever antique replays you'd relay today
To give it away
To the dead giveaway
Of what you say
@ the Cafe


Mira! Over here! No,
The other over here - here,
Overhear "hear"
And pass on the word over heard
Directly below what is under stood

Which way the way
The "way" way, the way, you say?
Oo and how much does it weigh weigh weigh
Your tender beauty chica y cholo
I am in love with your love and tonight
You invite me in for a beer and a poem and a TV?
What more is there, moon in a puddle man
I am all jazzed with - entiendes, you get it?
We can put the books in the bar-b-que but they don't burn but
They do starts fires

That which never is to reoccur
Upon the stoop down scoop out free range Stoopity Stoop
The most iconoclastic mixes the utterly bombastic
Yet treacle sweet songbirds
I mean pigeons do wander cross the street awreet

Once I blew blue
Then I knew new
The car trunk of impromptu
Jokes into a knitting consciousness rosary
Where the Wizard of Oz bicycle meets
E.T. the bicycle the wrong way cross
The Third Street declaring it Independence Day

By that time the door was locked, we waited till it thawed
Not a thing poured forth listen to me now
Nothing passed over or under the door was locked
We watched over it protecting with our gaze
Tiny nervous missions of arbitrary conclusive observances
Trickle like eyes down eyes
The blood does not come willingly back to the heart
papa tunk a tonk a tunk
In these Days of Women and Men
Our patience paid off hair in honey on air
And time was our ally and the door the door the door
Refused to say goodbye as it disappeared


I am standing without legs man that is how happy
The little door, you can get in, you just
gotta bend
way down low
That is the "way in" way man
And the way out, you gotta write that yourself
Because this door is the In door, mira
The way you get in and it is the only way
(Are you listening?)
(Tu entiendes?)
It is the only way you can get in
When the be wants to gain begin
To say what you gotta say
@ the Cafe

papa tunk a tonk a tunk

Bienvenida, sis y bro
Where you go when you got nowhere to go
Bop the key in the sky and cry
It's your tongue or your life
Roar the door once more
Won't always swingin
In the Cafe
@ the Cafe
Cafe ole

Inside the cafe there is a poem
Inside the poem there is a story
Inside the story there is a word
That is a poem
Inside that poem is another poem
That poem is the word
That word is the cafe
@ the Cafe

What did one Cafe poet say to the other
It was the Other who spoke
The shadow leans across the land, the husk of dusk
The Declaration of Independence Poem and the Constitution Poem
A drumsax gets born to be the poem's mate
I would love no I take it back
No woulds only love I love
Knock out a bruised birth cigarette and spill your beer thanks
This one body male-female call it the looooove pit
Where we pubic velcro the future swimming
Always use the Buddy System, buddy
The Poetic License and the Prisoner of Dream Police
Where the jazzoetry of jazzomoetry
Outraces the meaning and the submeaning and
The uproariously hilarious hill of the disconvarious vowel change
The verb defers to dance and may I have this dense
The tiny box of Slamming puns and everything marching out the door salsa
Smashing televisions and preconceptions
Hoist the poem flag the flag is never a poem
Burn the damn poem then hoist the poem on a sail
Poems are never for sale you can't buy em or sell em
What the hell you do with em
The delirium of of em
The sweat from the brain fold's got bad gentle breath unbelying ovum
The poem that dances the world to word

Unbutton the tender buttons, Ms Gertrude
I have surprise for you
Life's a poem
Can I have this dance forever


I say
I say what
I say what needs
I say what needs to be
I say what needs to be said
I say what needs to be said to see

Now introducing
Next up we've got
It's a pleasure to bring up here
You all know so let's give
Let's give a big hand to
The one-and-only
Please welcome
Without further adon't
Put your one hand together for
The moment we've all been waiting for for
You're in for a real treat now
OK something very special now
All right I don't know if you're ready
Here we go
Needing no intro


What Happens In This Room Is This:
Wait right here.
I'll be right back.

Whatever
Whatever You Say
Whatever You Say Is True
Everybody wants to get paid
Everybody wants to get laid
Everybody needs to pay the rent
Everybody wonders where it went

Shut up and I'll write
At last, the Muse takes over. Kid,
It ain't like it once was,
Fancy Pants and a gauzy
Nymph to sharpen yr pen quills
This is Modernity, you're part
Of it, the scene is lava, eat me.

Next!

Talk to you well
Take good soon
I'll be right back
Wait here. Don't move.

Words well they are real I mean
@the Cafe they become what you say
I remember the night we met
It was more like
My words coinjured you up
It was like you weren't there at first
but I was you know like talking
this poem
into being
and the being
was you
a single thought
erupts like wild fire
across the jammed floor
tinder brains catch the idea and it's gone
up in flames like a tower like the night Dante
came to the cafe man it was hot it was burning

"It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind."
That's what he said, the night Wallace Stevens was there.

that poem the one
that appeared I MEAN
is appearing

above your shoulder


Aieee! What is it? That THING!
It is - the sun
It is - day
It is like nothing you have ever seen
There @ the cafe

What TIME is it you say
I'm so late I'm early
6 o'clock. The poets rise in a swirl of trailing poems in cigarette smoke
Many half empty beer rinds
A wad of poem stuck on a shoe the shoe unattached to a foot
Wake up wake up the World with your Words
Wake up with a START
I am beginning
A heart

Day calls a sweet word sailing a gentle wing
Down @ the Cafe, lifting the shadows that once
Were night. Now the chairs smooth back air, the paste of knowledge
Blurts out its silence. I wouldn't want any scrap of sound around.
I'd sweep sweep the leaping connections
Taped into a tattered book, a sweep full of fulfillment's filiment. I would
But then again, all languages, the peoples piled in corners smiling
"That was ‘Hip hop We Don't Stop'" and the crawling hill cornered the
guest With a crooked tooth. The bald guy who made up the poems from the
Audience's words
And the one who shattered you,
how could she/he know,
reading the poem just for you

papa tunk a tonk a tunk
The talking coconut will not shut up
papa tunk a tonk a tunk
The talking coconut will not shut up


Talk to you well
Take good soon
I'll be right back
Wait here. Don't move