EMPTY RESTAURANTS CROWDED LIBRARIES

EMPTY RESTAURANTS CROWDED LIBRARIES


The restaurants in town are empty
their menus stacked and starved for traffic
while the central library is stacked
with nearly as many patrons
as magazines, videos, and books
it's a clean and everything in order place
where you can go and sit solitarily
among the masses alone in the crowd.

The bus station ambience
of the computer section
is where keyboards and screens
are sought like altars and shrines.

A gothic girl smacks her lips while chewing gum
beside a man in a suit who smells of pastrami and cheese

next to a lady all upset taking it out on the clerk
when the computer loses all of her data
next to a know it all guy complaining
to no one in particular at
how low tech the system is

next to a nervous elder,
his first time on a keyboard
tying up two assistants with
confounding compounding questions
next to a hip hopper listening to audio
so loud it's rattling the headsets
while the unemployed job hunt on line
and migrants seek their mother tongue
on the wondrous world wide web
as aspiring students apply to technical schools
next to craiglisters, facebookers, youtubers,
gamesters and payers of bills on line
and me googling the New York Times

to my left a haggard man
asleep at the switch
his head so bent
his chin seems hooked
and bound to his chest
and to my right a roughneck
sharing a seat with his chick
whispering in her ear something
which makes her retort
"this is a library not a motel"

suddenly a retiree confronts
a couple of loud parolees
and tells them
"this is a library
you need to keep quiet"
and on cue they holler back
"so why are you opening your big mouth"

then in the commotion behind me
four cops wrestle to the floor a wool cap thug
who was packing a concealed loaded weapon.


By L DOUGLAS ST OURS November 2010