In Search Of Arthur Rimbaud

Self Portrait by Julian Hakym

young poets 

and 

old cafes

the view is always piquant street-side.

curled scenes through 19th century glass, 

quaint as they may be, age the extant complexion 

our faces reject -  visions words demand 

from devotees and suitors alike.

verses in porcelain chipped-edge cups 

color each word red, shaded by your mouth 

of desirous flesh, caffeinated and smoke-fragranced, 

each line capturing an audience in silence. 

cobbled streets collect rainwater and tears, 

rounded stones whetted for engraved words, 

and you offering discorded glances 

to potentialities:  "have a light?" breaks the ice, 

but your lips are frozen unto themselves, 

sealing opportunity to ethereal imagination.

we shuffle across weathered floors of ash-strewn 

rhymes, eye contact engorging our neurosis, 

burning this agony of want onto paper. and yet, 

orgy lust is but a book cover away from open, 

those dead and dying poets, kept neatly under 

your hat, the one you wear to make you "older."  

young poetry is much too avid  to be dark. 

brooding is for jaded eyes, echoed hearts;

yours simply beg cupidity for quenching. 

caffeinated mid-day angst in peppered

vignettes of your latest fling or love affair,  

is punctuated by smoke-stained cuticles 

shaded amber by needless habit: 

that will suffice for now, for

as long as tobacco smolders quietly

between spring's willowed fingers 

and an old soul's 

reason. 

Poem © 2012 R. Burnett Baker 

Window photo taken by R. Baker, 2009 in Ithaca, NY