About the Author

by patrick
It is late, of course, it is always late,
squirreled among stacks of books
he stares up over the world's deepest
coffee cup, it's darkness darker
than any man's soul. He has a thought 
that will change the way you think about
crokuses forever, if only you would think
about crokuses forever.
The window shields us from the unknown,
from that man selling pencils for ten dollars outside.
The window is a solid he can see through,
a romance novel, a politician.
What are we doing here so late when all the world's
joy is spilling out like change through a hole in a poor
man's pocket? We are here
because we ache for peace, for the end
of desolation. We are here because every mouth
we kiss is full of teeth, every book disaster. We are
here because in here we know the other the way
we think we know ourselves.
He sees the moon as half full,  never half empty.
Moonlight becomes him. Sometimes he
becomes moonlight. Sometimes the evening
reminds him that there is more to life
than the sound of pidgeons fluttering in gables, 
that expressionless words are never enough.
The man with one arm has followed us, eyes
us from the corner. He wants to know what
we talk about when we sit
spralwed across vinyl seats with elbows
planted on linoleum squares. We talk about
him, about tomorrow,
how too often love
disappears before its time.
The one-armed man shouts at us from
the corner, spinning, sputtering,
and if
we could just paint a red stripe on him we
could cut customers' hair right now.
He comes like rain, without message, without urgency,
just arriving and staying too long.
We are no different, just better behaved,
just better dressed.