Kenneth Pobo

Suburban Coffee

On our street cars talk
to each other. I walk
to the convenient store,
see blue spider webs

of televisions
through windows. This year
I'm growing a coffee plant,
giving the jungle a small

boost. It won't make beans,
won't do much more
than sing faintly of a rain
forest here where we watch

the weather station,
our Delphic oracle,
and keep "Do lists"
so we don't forget things

 

 

Poet's Heaven

Maybe animals will kill
each other with panache
in the great beyond. Maybe
people will stop killing

each other, heavenly mansions
filled with millions of cut-up
credit cards. And maybe
in flower heaven plants

petal over winter. If poets
have a heaven, will it be
rainy, boozy, and dark?
Who sits on the right hand

of Edwin Arlington Robinson,
who on the left? Whitman
would take the role of sun,
but he'd keep sneaking

behind clouds to find handsome
numbers. It might have
charms, eternal poetry readings
and out-of-print books

back in print. But the egos --
night lit up by colliding comets,
stanzas breaking free and
rising kite-like into infinity.

 

Sometimes at a Party

Sometimes at a party
Steve finds that his head
is full of breaking

dishes thrown by lovers
whose fighting may leave
one bleeding on the floor,

yet he laughs
and carries on as if this fight
is no closer than tabloid

talk of two film stars,
hops around from guest
to guest, cracking jokes,

cracking open
the back door
so he can slip out,

voices in his head
stopped only
by a blue

browalia
in thin white
pajama bottoms of moonlight.