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NDHK Sep 2012
She sits across from me sipping and slurping her fat free french vanilla.
While I'm pacing myself with cappuccino imitation.

"All I'm saying is, that if he starts calling me baby, I might wanna keep him!"

She says it with that cajoling tone.
But I can notice the glimmer in her eyes that tells me she longs for that.
That sweet pet name that would mean she's special to him, in her mind...

I never could get comfortable around those things...pet names.
Cutesy little endearments reserved for a child's affection.

What is wrong with me?

She's vibrating with unmasked giddiness, glancing at her phone.
They've been dating for only months but she is lost in him.

Him.
With his once a week date nights
and clean shaven face
and joking interaction with her friends.  

She's full of soft embrace and warm affection and vulnerable interest.
Wanting never looked so form fitting on a person.
Like a cup waiting for a refill...

"If you want, I could see if his friend is up for dinner next week? You know it's been months for you..."

I hope she doesn't choke on her millionth slurp with the glare of indignation leveled at her cherub-like face.

"Ah thanks, but no thanks." races out of my mouth before I even hesitate to pretend to consider her obvious proposal.

How is it that easy to just offer companionship like that? Do I give off a "desperate for love" vibe?
And what the hell makes her think I can't find someone on my own **** time?


"Okay, okay. It's just...I hate seeing you alone. Don't you want to not be alone anymore?"

I know she loves me but those kind of questions from her caring heart, make me contemplate knocking her in the head.

My alone-ness she says.
My singular existence.

I'd laugh at her if I didn't know it would hurt her feelings.
To disregard her feeble attempts at pairing me up with whatever half-assed man candy she could sway my way.

I'm staring at the ring left from my coffee,
wondering if I should just give in this one time for her,
for me,
for the over used batteries at home.

"I'm not lonely you know. I just, haven't felt that connection yet."

Looking pitifully back at me she wonders aloud, "You're always waiting on that connection but have you ever felt it before? I mean, how do you know it's even real, that body, mind, spirit...magnet pull you believe so fiercely?"

It's the first time I've given her a genuine smile today as I tell her yes I have felt it before.
Briefly...
Bitter sweetly...

I just never got his last name.

It might have been years ago but I can still recall with clarity that electric tornado that seemed to have surrounded us.

We had only been gifted ten hours together but it left a mark on me for over fourteen years.
His face is definitely matured I imagine and his body shaped differently.
But I'll never mistake those sea green eyes, haloed by dusty blue cloud rings.  

The only boy who has ever made me want to get lost and never be found.

"Well...good luck with that. But until mystery man crashes back into your life, for god's sake live a little huh!"

She means well I'm sure but like an eager pup I just tsk at her goofily plastered expression and finish off the grainy remains of my only afternoon delight. She's in a hurry to make her "honey bunny" a homemade dinner anyway so it's not hard to cut things short on our weekly coffee shop vent session.

She's floating out the door before I even get my coat above my elbows but I can't feel offended.
Mulling over the uncomfortable idea of boring interaction with another stranger I decide to grab one more drink for the ride home.

Alone.

Oh, wonderful...now she's planted that seed.

Shaking it off, I order my vice and move benignly to wait and resolve to not think about anything related to that anymore either.

"Seems outrageous they charge so much for imitation don't you think?"

The question's asked to me but I pretend I can't hear it. A guy hitting on me today is not what I want to deal with.

And he seems to be standing right behind me
making goosebumps scatter across my neck.

He tries again, "So I guess you like buying bottom of the barrel cappuccino?"

This time I've gotten a little itchy from his voice and want him to just stop in his tracks.
So I turn to tell him where, in fact, he can go...

But I'm the one stopped short and a bit flabbergasted.

No way do things happen to me like this.

Those coincidental, lucky, fated things...

I almost wish I was a liar right now with the things I just spilled to my loyally, encouraging friend.
Because there is no way the universe would be this cruel.

Finally I exhale and word *****,

"They're the only place that taste just like the ones at my grandmas' house every summer when I was a girl. I waited a long time to find that connection again, even if it is just coffee..."

The smirking face and broad shoulders that greet me aren't the cause of my temporary delirium.
Not even the wild hair and black rimmed glasses.

It's the sea green, haloed dusty blue eyes centering all the rest that shallow my breaths

Of all the places.....

Like a falling satin sheet his face morphs into a query riddled expression.

I hear the barista call out a name and he reluctantly steps away, never taking his eyes off mine whispering,

"I'll...be right back. Don't move...please?"

I'm nodding like an awkward parrot and he turns to grab his imitation coffee.
The same kind I'm waiting on.
And I start smiling after a second.

Not because of the similar drink order, which could be anyone...

But because of something I haven't known until this moment for over fourteen years.
All thanks to fate, or destiny...
Or perhaps the oblivious barista.

His last name...


*© NDHK
James Floss  Oct 2018
BROWN TOWN
James Floss Oct 2018
We'd bound around
For golf downtown
Frisbees always in hand

"The students are coming!!”
Was a seasonal refrain
As we’d goofily gallivant

Mother’s Day shows
We‘re free, mother-suckers
For your kids, a show we grant

A CLOWN SHOW!
A DOWNTOWN SHOW!
THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN’T!

Rock their world with juggling
See the Doctor for what ails
Rudi and O in laundromat land

Jeanie, Splash, Allison, Donna,
Silly girls astonishing with
Leaps, jokes and handstands

Chewey, Steamboat and Grog
"Yeah-yeah! Yeah-yeah!”
Silly boys grandstanding

All hail Papa Gale! We
Funned with Cpt. Plunge
Leader of the band!

Sweet Georgia!
**** croquet!
It was grand!



(**** croquet was the official lawn game of the Sweet Georgia Brown Clowns during the summer 198x Trinity Country tour [wherein we masqueraded as a Norwegian Salmon Kissing team at a Moose Lodge Talent Show in Lewiston, CA* {true!}]: “Don’t forget your hat!”)

*(we won)
Leslie Srajek Feb 2010
Three of my gorgeous friends stood outside the restaurant
where I sat eating dinner with the poet
and made faces at me through the window.
They were wearing red, turquoise,
and pale green silk,
and with their ripe smiles,
they looked like goddesses behaving goofily.
Not what well-mannered women in their 40's do,
but they did it anyway,
and I laughed and he laughed.
He raised his fork to them and laughed.

I wanted to talk about "Moon-Skin,"
and poetry and courage and mortality,
and we did.
We talked about all of it.
We ate steak and drank red wine,
and if I noticed that his hair did not fall over his eyes in the quite the same way it had all day,
or remembered—just briefly—
the feel of his hand on my back as we came through the door,
or listened to the sound of his breathing as we drove back to his hotel,
it does not mean that I hadn't been paying attention
to all of the talk,
especially about mortality.

It just means that some part of me finally woke up
and realized that that the mind and body together make poetry,
and I wanted to apologize to someone
for taking so long to understand this—
that I am allowed to pay attention to all of it,
that this craft will not ask me to leave any of my senses behind,
that it will say, instead, use everything, tell it all,
and my God,
what have you been waiting for?

Yes, tell everything, even how he took the moist, red morsel of meat
from the point of my knife and put it into his mouth,
even this description—so flagrant and entirely lacking in subtlety,
I am allowed to say yes,
yes, it happened exactly that way.
Copyright 2010 by Leslie Crowley Srajek
mace  May 11
spring cleaning
mace May 11
when she leaves for work,
i'm left in the absence of wonderful wild spirit.

i tidy up the covers we slept on together peacefully & arrange the stuffed animals.

they look happy that we no longer dominate the bed with our talking and laughter, they watched us enviously from the floor the night before.

i wipe down the counters lightly, coated with dust, & vaccum the floor. i assume my mother would be surprised at the sight of me after i proclaimed "i will never fall in love!" as a 10 yr old.

i go downstairs and wash our dishes from the dinner the night before, remembering how each cookware served us, & how goofily we waltzed in the kitchen ballroom.

the day is bright and sunny, even if it isn't.

as i take out the trash on my way out, i commute to my house
where she'll be for the rest of the week.
i would literally do anything for her. guys IM SO IN LOVEEE
Huda Feb 2015
Goofily singing me out of my misery
kissing me out of reality and tucking me in between two night clouds
asking the unnamed dragon with the eyes of glass to take care of me

buried kisses on my forehead to **** what's on the other side
**** what's on the other side

the white winged dragon is setting me on fire
reality is ******* me back in
                                            Help me
                          Sing me out of this for now
leeannejjang  Sep 2015
1:45 AM
leeannejjang Sep 2015
I should be sleeping,
With soft sheets under my skin.
But my mind wanders,
To memories I can't let go.

It's exactly three months,
Since you left.
But the wound feel so fresh
Like it was  just yesterday.

I browse through my profile,
Jumping from albums to photos.
I realize most of it was you and I.

Hundreds of us together.
Smiling goofily at the camera.
We are so happy that I didnt see this moment coming.

Here I am remembering
What was gone.
Trying to hold something that was just a distant past.
Like pouring salt on my own cuts.

It's 1:45 AM.
I should be dreaming of something,
But I choose to dream of you and I.
A story that already ended.

I missed you.
But it seems my eyes are tired of crying for you.
Maybe its true,
Our heart never stops loving,
But it gets tired of waiting
And gets used to the emptiness inside.
That someone once a plays a big part,
Now an empty hole in my heart.
han  Feb 2018
Adjectives
han Feb 2018
I attempted
to adequately describe you
yet ended up
pathetically tongue tied
for how does a human
tell another human
through words
how much they adore:
the way their eyes squint,
smile goofily when enthused,
toss their head back and laugh
or sing to their favorite songs
there is no word
to sum up a beautiful
collection of moments
February 5th~han
Beebz The Queen Dec 2014
i see you smile at me from across the room
our eyes play a friendly game of hide and seek
i go over the pros and cons of a polite introduction
because your grin has made me weak
it seems that in this the good out weighs the bad
so i goofily saunter over and you wink
i am utterly baffled at your face up close
and it was suddenly hard for me to think
it seems so casual to talk to you like im not terrified
and i even laugh a little when you ask me to dance
im still waiting for you to up and leave
because i simply refuse to believe in romance.
just jabbering gibberish (A - I)

Again, another awkward ambitious
arduous attempt at alphabetically
arranging atrociously ambiguously
absolutely asinine avoidable alliteration.

Because...? Basically bonafide belching,
bobbing, bumbling, bohemian beastie boy,
bereft ******, bleeds blasé blues, begetting
bloviated boilerplate bildungsroman,
boasting bougainvillea background.

Civil, clever clover chomping, cheap
chipper cool cutthroat clueless clodhopper,
chafed centenary, codifies communication
cryptically, challenging capable, certifiably
cheerful college coed.

Divine dapper daredevil, deft, destitute,
doddering, dorky dude, dummkopf Dagwood
descendent, dagnabbit, demands daring
dedicated doodling, dubious, dynamite,

deaf dwarf, diehard doppelganger, Doctor
Demento double, declaring depraved
daffy dis(pense)able dufus Donald Duck
derailed democracy devastatingly defunct.

Eccentric, edified English exile,
effervescent, elementary, echinoderm
eating egghead, Earthling, excretes,
etches, *******, effortless exceptional
emphatic effluvium enraging eminent,

eschatologically entranced, elongated
elasmobranchii, emerald eyed Ebenezer,
effectively experiments, emulates epochal
eczema epidemic, elevating, escalating,
exaggerating enmity, enduring exhausting
emphysema.

Freed fentanyl fueled, fickle figurative
flippant fiddler, fiendishly filmy, fishy,
fluke, flamboyantly frivolous, fictitious,
felonious, fallacious, fabulously fatalistic,
flabbergasted, fettered, flustered, facile,
faceless, feckless, financially forked,

foregone, forlorn futile fulsome, freckled
feverish, foo fighting, faulty, freezing,
fleeting famously failing forecaster, flubs
"FAKE" fundamental fibber fiat, fabricating
fiery fissile fractured fios faculties.

Gamesomeness goads gawky, gingerly,
goofily graceful, grandiloquent gent, gallant,
genteel, geico, guppy gecko, gabbling gaffes,
gagging, gamboling, gestating, gesticulating,
garlic, gnashing, gobbling, gyrating,

gruesomely grinning, grappling, gnomadic
giggly, grubby, gastrointestinally grumpy
gewgaw gazing guy, geographically germane,
gungho, grave gremlin, grumbling, guiding,
guaranteeing, guerilla gripped gatling guns
ginning gumpshun.

Hello! Herewith halfway harmless hazmat,
haphazard haggard, hectored, hastily,
hurriedly, harriedly hammered, handsomely
hackneyed, heady, hellbent hillbilly, hirsute,
hidden hippie, huffy humanoid, hexed, heady,
Hellenistic, holistic, hermetic, hedonistic
heterosexual **** sapiens historical heirloom,
homeless, hopeful, holy, hee haw heretical hobo.

Indefatigable, iconographic, iconic, idealistic,
idyllic, inimitable, idiosyncratic, ineffable,
irreverently issuing idiotic, indifferent, inert,
ineffectual, ingeniously iniquitous, immaterial,
insignificant, indubitable, inexplicable, ignoble
itches, ineffectually illustriously illuminating
immovable infused ichthyosaurus implanted
inside igneous intrusions immensely
imperturbable improbable.

— The End —