Coffeehouse Trance

                "Coffeehouse Trance"

Motto:  If the Pope is the poet of the love God
              of jealousy, the poet is the Pope of Desire.

Sinking into trance of automatic writing,
nothing of the coffeehouse coming through
but nymph-visions passing or alighting,
the dazed transcriptionist receives the new

afflatus with confidence he'll get it down
in efficientest symplicity.
He sees two couples about the town
in the haven of youth's felicity.

They start comparing parents' love-lives.
One girl's was riddled with infidelity,
jealous harangues tanked up in dives.
The other girl's own folks' terse civility

was all they could spare for one another
ever since the Mother's found-out fling
a decade prior made just some other
platonic mockery of desire's real thing.

Now then, one of those two guys who are shared by
those two girls had a Dad who was gone
and a Mom who hooked a bit, the boy nearby
in the next room while the revels went on.

The second guy, friend of the girls' other guy,
had parents who were ever deep in love,
met not each other's strayings with some wry
possessive judgment - but forgave: above

all each deferred t'other in own bod's claims.
All four offspring in their a-quatre menage
to remake human love bent modest aims,
staring down Venus's decolletage....

Sinking into trance of automatic writing,
nothing of the coffeehouse coming through
but nymph-visions passing or alighting,
the dazed transcriptionist receives the new.