one lucky, café Japonais


in this city
at any dinner hour
I’ll always have
the rows of albums
            these shelves
this one lucky archive
of the years
where the master-san
and his camera
greet a new generation
of regulars, and I
of oceans and decades gone
return once more
flip the pages . . .
to nam-vet bj
       pakistani bobby and
haight-ashbury joan:  she
whom I tugged free
of this city
while another town
pulled her free-
love aching to leave
me weary
    sliding bleary
          shirt to navel
                    to the
                         floor

now once more
to the master-san I say
          what’s love
(you played it for her)
         got to do with it
(play it for me)
that second-hand emotion
scrawled long ago
on the suntory bottle-keep
which today’s regulars know
                   you can’t

not for very long


* Alan Girling used to write short fiction. Now it's mainly poetry. However he has had a play produced and would be willing to write a novel if the right idea came along. He writes in Richmond, British Columbia. Alan adds “A bottle-keep refers an already paid for bottle of liquor that bars keep for customers with their names written on them, usually in black marker. It's common practice in Japan anyway.”