Enga mellom fjella

The Break Espresso's mirrors

"I vented, my voice now angry, yet knowing peace could never come through merely giving word to pain. Yet wounds won't heal unless they're lanced. Whence comes the joy?" KE

Duong Thu Huong was a member of "Sing Louder than the Bombs", a Vietnamese brigade to entertain troops. Disillusioned and now exiled she comments on the government of her native land, "The have no other credibility than to sleep with dead corpses."

When I read her story, related in Poets & Writers (page 27). I thought... what beautiful images... And what courage to go on with life in another land, still singing louder than the bombs.

"She nodded in her wizened way, 'To give hope to a soldier destined to become a corpse, I sang louder than the bombs.'"

The Break Espresso's mirrors

Enter into the realm of coffee
quiet kingdom of midnight scholars lost in thoughts.
Behind their focused eyes lie mirrored
the enlightenment of an Age long sought,
begging to burst forth.

This place of wooden chairs, its high beamed ceiling,
late night cavern of quiche and lemon cheese cake,
drinks sipped until the lights blink off.
Now deep within these mirrors you'll see them,
tangled in their thoughts.

© Kåre Enga [166.200] 2009-09-11

The Break Espresso on North Higgins in Missoula, Montana is cavernous! It has old mirrors hung on the walls and caters to students and the coffee crowd. They have cookies, quiche and cheese cake, pies and pastries, bagels and panini. Ryne was there last night helping out and I told him I wrote this. Hope to "finish" it to show him before I leave town. The original prompt? The mirrors.

From last winter:



ME?

Market: Got my double shot orange latté from the Loose Caboose, ate my chicken eggroll (hot from the pot) and bought mushrooms (lobster, matsutake, blue cluster chantrelle), Japanese eggplant, frozen ground emu (its meat a purplish-red) and Paradise peaches (finally! both white and yellow). Of course, I also treated myself with a loaf of sticky pull-aparts. And I spoke to the lady from Argentina who makes alfajores.

Writing

I need to pull a chapbook together. Maybe one based on death, dying, loss and named after the poem "The sound of lavender" .

Could follow in the footsteps of folks like Anselm Berrigan, featured in this month's Poets & Writers: http://www.pw.org He's gone a non-traditional route at times.

They printed his poem, "Let Us Sample Protection Together" on page 37 this month. I don't particularly 'get it' nor like it. It rambles and that's okay; but, it looks like prose cut up. I find neither rhythm nor rhyme nor melody (my 'letters' and prose poems have more). The juxtaposition of some images are interesting. But, to me, it doesn't feel like poetry...

Once you're well-known it doesn't really matter though, does it?

Montana: 81° and pleasant in Missoula at 7 p.m.

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