Café 12 After Midnight, Sometime In '79 (Rev./Rep.) Poem by Frank James Ryan Jr...fjr

Objects moved vaguely
past peripheral spectrums,
through dilated pupils,
on a cobblestone passway,
in a Village called Greenwich.

Our dreams yet to peak,
though our thoughts... well blottered,
while we sat juxtaposed
ass-sore on wine crates
at a box cafe grotto
in a windowless basement
expressively constructed
for incense and 'tea',
'front a stage that stank hard
of Boonesfarm and Thunder
our late night grapes d'jour
at a buck ninety-eight,
before quarts turned to liters,
waiting for the drunkened featured guest.

Recitations by Bukowski,
applause, a cymbiled concert,
tarnished spoons on bottle necks;
We, 'n Ziggy felt the Stardust -
'neath the streets at Cafe 12.

Curled wafts of gray smoke
fixed wandered eyes skyward,
on the black-strobe washed ceiling,
breathing in the vintaged dust,
mesmerized, anesthesized
to the million silver stars
raining over ashed tables,
while the sweet tongue of verse
mixed rhythm, sedating flux
with the punch of sweet leaf -
['fore a chaser of spirit jo].

It was the nineteen-seventies,
Deborah Harry bought us drinks;
we'll always swear she really did
the same year Cronkite told us
about the Jonestown Massacre,
and that Da Nang was just a 'conflict',
though Watergate was the skinny
back when vinyl still had spin.

Cat Stevens leaped moonshadows
'fore his peace train sailed east
with some tillermen from Tehran,
for a ticket to advocate
his love for a god
whose word sanctions war (?)
And the plot against Rushdie,
while holding a stained Quran
and praying that the infidels
be banished from his world,
from a mideast mountain top,
overlooking red desert,
in the wake of social cancer -
otherwise known as Hate.

Such is time and consequence -
in fast forward movement.
We thought we could freeze it...,
We Were Wrong, and we knew it-
Or did we....................?



© 2014-All rights reserved
Frank James Ryan Jr. / FjR

*Revised October 14th,2016
Reposted October 20th,2016