Kai kicks off NPM with an excellent collection of themed poems. Welcome to FC, Kai. Enjoy the blue ribbon!
Desperado (Boneless Café)
These short, bright autumn days,
the sky a lighter blue than summer’s
as though it’s fading with the year.
The bay nudges into the land saying,
Look what wealth of sparkles I bring.
The fronds of the palms along Lamont Street
dangle, relaxed, like a gunslinger’s
fingers above the holster –
or is that me, confident I can draw
something out of all this loveliness
to fly and pierce your heart?
And like the desperado, I’m willing to gamble
in this dangerous game of letting
beauty enter us, my own flawed life.
Boneless Café again
Karen, on her way to a meeting,
covered in zig-zags, stops to say hello
as the track riffs out in repetitions—
tall, thin Karen who used to give massages
and now manages rental properties.
The afternoon’s so bright
I can barely stand to look at the bay
and a new track starts, equally mellow
(marimbas) as a tiny spider traverses
between keyboard and saucer;
I guess it parachuted into this poem.
I can’t stand not to look at the bay either,
the mountain luminous behind — a view
for which you don’t mind hurting your eyes.
Five Loaves Café, Parramatta
The third coffee’s too much –
over-ripe, it resurrects the taste
of my smoker’s mouth, of coffees
drunk to kill time on European pavements
when I was young. Waiting for some
famous gallery to open before I knew
what art was. These moments when
everyone’s going about their morning
and in the midst of the bustle you’re alone,
invisible, you don’t make sense.
I was so bad at loneliness then.
Now I know how to outwait it, that
nothing too extreme will follow. You can
even maintain self-respect, because
loneliness is lonely too – we all are.
The Big Rain (Casey’s Café, Narooma)
Lynch’s Hotel has its Christmas decorations up
and the sushi banner flies bravely
just down the hill, but the coast beyond
is one vast sheaf of grey, the intersection
swept by the same rain that flattened my hair,
makes my jeans clammy. The cafe’s
surprisingly packed. At the next table
six older guys in black or blue
chatter and lay down the law.
The drive here was wild: branches on the road,
the windscreen opaque with rain
no matter what speed the wipers.
One of the six gets up to unbolt the door,
admit a woman wrapped in a shawl of hair.
Kai Jensen was born in Philadelphia. As a child he emigrated to New Zealand with his family, and is now an Australian. Kai works from home as a consultant and specialist editor at Wallaga Lake on the Far South Coast of New South Wales. His poems (many written in cafés) have appeared in most leading Australasian literary journals and in the United States, in The Inquisitive Eater, Men Matters Online, NewVerseNews and Rattle.
