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A.D.D.

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I’ve been meaning to put this up for a few months now. I wrote it back in November, after a poetry reading night at Birdies in town. This was my impression, written mostly in about forty minutes after we got home.

Pretty girl in the red coat
And the black stockings
And the Audrey Hepburn black hat —
Donna makes a reference
To Breakfast at Tiffany’s
I don’t quite understand.

Tales of New York
Told from Grandpa’s letters
And photographs on the roof.
Manhattan is not a mountain top;
It never will be.
She’s too good for that.

The girl in the red coat
Is here with friends
They chatter for a while
In the back room
Before getting a table
By the radiator.
Her friend with the beard
Wears an interesting coat.

What’s that policeman doing
Out in the street?
I think I parked legally
For what it’s worth.

JK (or JC? No, it’s RJ) spits poetry
The partner in crime says,
Speaking briefly of [trying hard to remember … nope]
And now Cliff’s on his way to
Six months in Afghanistan.

A woman reads from her laptop
Muttering vaguely about technology
Everyone else has papers or books
Loses her place
When she tries to scroll too fast;
Mutters a vague “oh, sh..”
Under her breath
As she finds
Her place
And continues reading.

An older man speaks
Of thinning the buffalo herd,
And all I can think is that
You can’t roller skate there (in the buffalo herd),
And so I missed his point
Altogether.
But he won’t do Haiku
Unless he can do it in
Japanese, too.

Homeless man walks by
Outside the window —
Or maybe he’s just some guy traveling through —
A hiker or something —
He’s got a pretty decent pack and shoes and supplies
For a homeless man.

Le Hinton.
Black on most days,
I chuckle
Because I think I get it —
Reminds me of Elliott.
Le closes his book
In the key of G-minor.
My favorite key.

Now, there is music.
The man in the red shirt
Smiling his way across the street
I see through the window
Comes in very late —
The night is almost over.

The man in the red shirt
Sits at the table next to the girl
In the red coat
And the black stockings
And the Audrey Hepburn hat
There with friends.
What’s he drinking?

And now,
The lovely lady singing
About the weather
Has a cold behind;
Shouldn’t there be a song about tuning?
Why didn’t she dress in Layers?

Dream a Little Dream of Me
Brings childhood memories:
WBAL used to play records,
And sometimes you could hear them
As far south as Georgia.
We all sing along
With the chorus
Because it’s the only part
Most of us remember.

Driving home —
Shoot.
Is that my turn?
How long have I lived here now?
We laugh about it,
But is scares me sometimes.
Thank goodness for Maggie.

That’s pretty much my total impression of an entire evening. I remembered only the scattered details I wrote about, but there was a lot more to the night. It makes me believe I have A.A.D.D., and have probably had it for most of my life. Which explains a lot…

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