last sitting at table 58

By Coolhermit

Fri, 20 Nov 2020
  • 411 reads
2 comments
 
last sitting at table 58
 
threadbare carpet hotel breakfast
 
‘té? café? sir? madam?’
‘is there marmalade?’
‘I fetch you mermelada’
‘and a spoon for my muesli’
‘I fetch you, cuchara, madam’
‘no, ‘spoon’, I said’
 
porridge is being ladled
and admired 
 
‘the Scots spell porridge 'porage'’
‘I didn’t know that’
‘I have five prunes in mine each morning’
‘prunes eh? I think I'll join you’
‘prunes are good for the stool’
‘I didn’t know that’
 
my designated commensal is absent
I can't recall his name
he claims a dry sense of humour
‘but not many people get my jokes’
it occurs that he might have died overnight
 
I won't miss him nor his conversation
his porridge-brain philosophies
his rattling teeth
he’s never heard of fixative?
 
he told me he was political
proud he always voted Labour
or
was it Conservative?
 
I won’t miss his toast crumbs splattering the table
and his slurping ‘aahs’ at tomato soup or breakfast tea
 
‘té? senor?’
 
‘a cup of tea? smashing’
the waiter pours a coffee
I sigh ‘thanks’ at his vanishing back
 
‘té? café? sir? madam?’
‘do you have lime marmalade?
‘lima mermelada? lo siento, senora’
 
mine is the window table
at my back a shuffle of plate-loaders
at the toaster bottleneck
erupts into angry muttering
 
a plate smashes
someone swears
someone cheers
someone tuts
 
‘no use moaning over spilled beans’
 
somewhere in the glooming
wondrous Scotland is waiting
 
a prowling matelot shirt sidles up
seeking a partner in misery, asks,
‘how did you sleep?’
(like a baby but she doesn’t want to hear that)
I lie, ‘terrible, I hardly slept at all’
‘could you hear that generator?’ 
I lie again, ‘yes it kept me up all night’
‘you as well? I’m changing my room, you should too’
 
‘té? café? sir? madam?’
‘is there marmalade?’
‘I fetch you mermelada’
‘and a spoon for my muesli’
‘I fetch you, cuchara, madam’ 
 
at every table couples grown fat, comfortable,
and grey together, sit together,
discussing omelettes
 
except table 58
the one with the view of nothing much
which I share with some guy from nowhere
with a dry sense of humour
who didn't make it to breakfast -
I hope he died overnight
choking on his dentures
 
in the half-gloom
a ‘private ambulance’ noses the gravel
I tap on my window
 
‘room for one more?’
 
Certificate U
Poem
Biography

Comments

Submitted by marandina on

Put me in mind of many, many hotel breakfasts especially on business. Soulless compared to breakfasts taken on holiday. Super read.

 

Submitted by Coolhermit on

This was written 'in real time' as it were; I wrote this in Scotland on a short break - I was trying to recover some creative equilibrium after receiving the foulest, most insulting email ever from a poet - one is used to poets' insults but this (from a man I considered a friend)  took the biscuit - however the holiday hardly lifted my gloom. 

I was in a particularly 'Wasteland' mood - as might be obvious - I use the waiters' serving as a 'greek' chorus as my protagonist endures the banality of breakfast. I do (on the QT) like my bit about a couple 'discussing omelettes'  - it is a shadow reflection of 'Prufrock' where the women come and go talking of Michaelangelo. 

Perhaps the highlight of the week was the mouldy, mouse nibbled finger of kit-kat I found under my pillow on evening one - it all went downhill after that smiley, 

Rick