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Just a roll call and yet another poem for today 4-6-21 |
Midmorning at the No Place Else Bar Bloody Marys stain the morning sky, the celery stalk of land more loose strings than soil but he can't hardly see beyond the blur of last night's revels and devils anyway, so it hardly matters that all the ice has melted and the glass was dirty to begin with. Freshly pressed and dressed, wearing a floppy straw hat with pink ribbons trailing atop over-permed curls frizzed beyond perfection, she delicately sips a mimosa, never realizing that what she needs won't be found in the bowl-sized crystal with plumeria floating in it. In the corner, the only table where you can smoke is scrunched close with instant friends for life sharing chairs, doctored coffee, and smokes: three to a match because the book is almost empty, no one has a lighter, and the barman has already collected the pale, pink conch shell candles. Behind the freshly polished and once again gleaming bar, the tender keeps his eye and heart peeled because it is half nine and he hopes it is his lucky day. Someone has to have one and it is his turn, isn't it? In the back, the cook preps the grill for another day's rites of passage of mahimahi merriment, and bar burgers good enough to make a medic give up the ghost and run screaming for a table because, why not? You only live once. Attitudes and life dreams share the pretzel bowl. Yesterday's dreams are feeding the cats that hang 'round the trashcan" good garbage means good eats: they've learned, as others never will, not to be picky, take what you can, and hope for the best. The young couple drifts in, bleary-eyed after a twenty-two-hour day of travel flying from Baltimore after the wedding. She's thinking they should have spent the night somewhere first, like her mother had suggested. Her feet hurt from the miles of hurry-up-hon-airport-sprints She's so tired and it'd be awful if she fell asleep, slept through losing her virginity. He's thinking she was worth the wait but that her mother was right (for once) and they should have spent the night somewhere before the marathon to get to Maui. Though it had never happened to him before, he didn't figure falling asleep on his bride would be a great beginning. Stifling a yawn, he sleepily looks at his new wife. Then grins. Suggests a swim to wake them both up. Jasper sits in his usual spot on the side, nursing his third mai tai while scribbling away on the next to last page of his notebook. Today's his last day of vacation and he'd swore he'd finally finish the book. A vacation spent missing out on all he'd always wanted to see and do. Calls home, knowing it is later there. I'm a page away from the end, hon. Care to join me? We deserve to celebrate! Unknowing she replies, that there's no place else she rather be. Barely old enough to drink, barely contained in her swimsuit and sarong, she contemplates her Sex-on-the-Beach running a long, fuchsia fingernail around and around the rim. She looks up, through sandy-colored and artfully mussed bangs to smile at the man joining her. I was wondering, she muses, pointing a nail out towards the ocean waves kissing the sand. What time is the whale show? Doesn't have a brain in her pretty little head, he thinks, but who needs brains? We'll go out on a boat to see them, sweetheart. Out, like, you know, there? Again pointing. He nods, orders a Bikini Blond beer, draft. Oh, she ponders. They won't jump on the boat will they? He thinks of the small motorized raft, reassures, sweet man that he is. The midmorning crowd shuffles off to do what they do realizing there was someplace else they need to, want to, have to be. Lackadaisical waves, sandy dollars scattered on the tables, tipping their way towards the door. Next high tide, or rainshower they'd wash back in because there really was No Place Else they'd rather be. |