For those of you who don't know this about me yet: I like to listen to the things people say. These things can be profound or hysterical, depending on the day. One of my favorite writing activities is to plunk myself down in a public place - usually a coffee shop or a diner - to pull out a pen and a notebook, and to listen. While I listen, the pen starts moving, recording a sentence from this table, and then a sentence from that table, and then perhaps a sentence from the waiter. Soon enough, I find myself with what I have come to refer to as "Dialogue Poetry" - a conversation between two people, named A and B for your convenience, stitched together from the pieces of conversations occurring nearby. Today's Dialogue Poem comes to you from my stop for an Americano at a coffee shop called The French Press over in Lakewood.
A: You just gotta watch out.
B: Is she...?
A: Really?
B: Ebay.
A: I'd just had a meeting with Phil.
B: She said that she didn't know this guy.
A: You've been exonerated.
B: Yeah, she was up all night.
A: Well that's always a plus.
B: She was kidding, right?
A: But I asked first.
B: We could be a team on this.
A: I'm not completely insensitive.
B: I know that!
A: Don't wake me up before the sun is out.
B: Oh, so you're gonna be like that now?
A: I was one point away from third.
B: Who could you respect for that?
A: I don't know.
B: I mean, I've always been friends with her.
A: He builds shoes.
B: Dude, those aren't shoes.
A: They're sandbags.
B: They make my mom sleep weird.
A: He coughed in my face numerous times.
B: Yeah, I like that.
A: It's senseless to pump myself full of chemicals.
B: Preserved in mercury?
A: My body won't do its job.
B: But that's exactly how vaccines work.
A: That's just silly.
B: It's cold in there, too.
A: Not after what happened in '76.
B: It was a HUGE epidemic.
A: It never happened.
B: That's the best way to go, man.
A: And if you do get sick?
B: That's a weird situation.
A: Breakfast on that wall over there.
B: That's not what I'm saying.
A: Is that French toast?
B: There is a lot going on inside that situation.
A: Could be.
B: It's kind of one of those things.
A: Are you gonna take a deduction?
B: I was just gonna get it to make Mom happy.
A: They wouldn't inject mercury intravenously.
B: It's probably infamous walnuts.
A: Do you eat tunafish?
B: Shut up about the mercury!
A: We were talkin' to him when we had dinner with him.
B: Don't you even start that.
A: That'd be so bad for you!
B: Oh, you are a FOOL.
A: You know what it probably is?
B: ....Breakfast?
This is great! There was an author who had a book of cell phone conversations she overheard just like this, but I can't remember her name or what the book was called. This was years ago and I've been looking for it ever since! I always thought it would be fun to try. It doesn't seem too difficult considering how inconsiderate people are with their cell phones. I am a lover of poetry, too, so this is hilarious to me! :)
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