Waitress
Musicians and carpenters
Meet upon your trays of food:
Aesthetics and the flesh
Play their little joke upon dogma,
Urged by the rhythm of your hands.
Your rouged cheeks slip unnoticed
Through the sexless turmoil.
The rituals are hastened
Lest they become self-conscious...
I stop you and remark:
“The sylvan story of your hair
Is damaged by your rhinestone comb.
May I remove it?” Then you stare.
The fact that you have been
Greeted by something other than a wink
Almost causes you to think.
You walk away, holding an emotion
That skims the lips of many adjectives.
Confused, uncertain, scornful—
With none of them fused together.
III.
Shop-Girl
Yellow roses in your black hair
Hold the significance
Of stifled mystics defying Time.
Yellow roses in your black hair
Can become to certain eyes
The trivial details of emotion.
Yellow roses in your black hair
Often embarrass passing philosophers
Who suddenly realize
That they have been furtively snatching at color and light.
Shop-girl, in the midst of your frolic,
Take this portrait without surprise.
Portraits are merely pretexts.
IV.
Manicurist
Maudlin, hurt, morose,
Tender, angry, remote,
Whimsical, frigid, impatient—
Compel these adjectives to become
Friendly to each other
And let them stumble in unison
Beneath the muscular trouble of life.
The careful Boss who sends them on
Holds one eye of bitterness
And another of sentimentality,
Closing each one on different occasions.
The careful Boss may be your soul,
Tired manicurist, amazing
The fragrant barber-shop
With words of valiant prose.
Ferretti, the mildly dying barber,
Loves his bald head with one finger
And whispers, “She’s crazy, I fire her tomorrow.
When customer ask her to eat with him
She laugh and tell him she no care
To pay too much for indigestion.
She’s crazy. I fire her tomorrow.”
Ferretti does not know
That souls are not entirely unconcerned
With straining for effects.