At Quilter's Bookshop Having Coffee Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

With maturity comes freedom?
Rubbish.
With an absence of choice
Have I ceased to be a man?

Reading Antony Burgess on morality
In the New Yorker,
I wrestled with predestination -
Nowt so queer as a clockwork orange.

As far as I could tell, things you think are OK -
Action makes it predestined.

I squeezed a glance at the twenty-or-so blonde
Bending over a second-hand book,
Wellington all the way - black and grey -
But great legs, dark tights.
Pity the haunches are hidden under a shift.

And then back to Burgess -
Maybe skins are choice -
It's just peeling that's wrong.

A very late middle-aged man having a coffee
Looking hopefully conspicuous -
Fruit for thought.

The girl barista is also personable,
As well as making a great trim flat white.

‘Girl, I'm goin to make you sweat', the song has it.
Not in my case, I don't have options -
They are just lookers.

Time was when the blush would bloom above the breasts
And heads would roll back -
Now sin is passing me by.
Good has been imposed upon me.

I never had to contend with mind control -
All the girls knew what I was thinking -
Some tossed their curls, some bit lips - some smiled.
Most just practiced being admired - and were dismissive.

But in the round
Sad-to-say, I have lost free will -
Now destined to an absence of choice
By unreciprocated zest.


An orange that just ticks.