Dialogue Poetry From This Morning

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?

The Allure of a Blank Notebook.

Over the summer, while I was playing in the woods out in Wisconsin, that Marit of mine sent me a care package full of all of our favorite things. Most of these things were drinkable - hot cocoa, tea, instant coffee - but stuck-in among everything was a blank notebook.

I would describe it as medium-sized for my tastes, with a soft orange cover and an elastic band that will stretch around the whole of it. There's a ribbon on the inside for the convenience of place-marking. The pages are lined, and the brand of notebook is "Piccadilly."

There is something quite thoroughly intoxicating about a blank notebook such as this. Oftentimes I find myself simply holding it, turning it over in my hands, running my fingers through its virgin pages as I salivate at the sheer possibility of it. What sort of treasures will tumble out of my brain, slide down my arm, and burst forth through my fingertips, exploding all over the blankness? What sort of story - as the directionless bastard child of a night of agonizing passion between Ink and Paper - what will it grow up to be?

I wonder about these things a lot every time I pick up a pen to scrawl out my own humble contributions to this world. If you could even call my words "a contribution," as I seldom allow any other eyes to see them. 

Anyway. Back to the novel.

Jasmine Pearls,
Miranda