if I had to flip hash browns
it’d be best in a diner
better still in a late
60s diner
chrome counter like a mirror
and the guy with a beard
reading his poems
lips moving inside his head
is reflected like he’s
talking in water
crack of an egg
the yoke moving slowly along the page
i’m in some city of love
cooking to the beat
hear it in the music
the protests
the hopes
the chanting
the gunfire
the trips
the harmonies
the mantra
the napalm
the wah-wah
the recitals
listen to the beat
the page is turning
there waving through the water
and the man with the beard
gets up to leave
and i am ready to flip
it
over easy
Mike Ferguson
Illustration Nick Victor
This is such a lovely poem, clever, deep and deceptive. The feel of the sixties is firm – how do you remember your teens so well, wild boy? The love chants, the beat, the alternating insidious reminders of ever-present war. The image of cooking/writing works well: egg/poem. But there is a certain ambiguity in the image of the water which wipes all things away, yet simultaneously carries things forward. Are its depths an image of the depths of the mind? This poem is cleverly framed by the bearded man reading it silently to himself, but also to us. That’s you, isn’t it? Overall, there’s a certain reassurance of cycles returning, yet this brings bad things as well as good. But the poetic voice survives and oversees all.
Comment by Jackie Moore on 18 August, 2016 at 1:44 pmThank you!
Comment by Mike on 19 August, 2016 at 11:44 am