POEM OF THE DAY

Bookstores, Cafes, and Chaos

Fragments of the world appear:
a blue-white streetlight hovers near;
a shifting, sandaled foot scuffs oiled wood;
the scent of tea and black caffeine
corrupts the air like unseen fog.
Blind people flip through Vonnegut
and architecture magazines. I laugh.
In such a place where people find
simplicity in ordered words,
the sheer verbosity in all those books
came from a pool of ink
that really isn't big at all.
That is, unless you consider that ink it is,
then it's a lot.
Added to that, varieties of addictive beverages,
of reading styles and friendly conversations,
and all should make this place, in fact,
the anarchist's nightmare,
the church chaos gets headaches in.

Justin Chadbourn