"O person like me"

I heard this read on NPR yesterday; it's so great. Aside from those in the book of Hafiz poetry Tommy gave me for Christmas (I Heard God Laughing) it's the best poem I've heard in a long time.

Bridal Shower by George Bilgere

Perhaps, in a distant café,
four or five people are talking
with the four or five people

who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in my favorite café.

And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.

And, like me, he misses the old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could take a pill for.

I liked it
when people who were talking to themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You respected people like that.

You didn’t want to kill them,
as I want to kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter’s bridal shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.

O person like me,
phoneless in your distant café,
I wish we could meet to discuss this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell phone,

after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,
face to face.




I used to work in a coffee shop in downtown Portland, all yuppies and homeless people, and I'd joke about the fact that everyone was talking to themselves - I had a customer that spoke to angels.
Even when leaving that out, this poem read my mind, as good poetry should.