amongtheorchids

Poem-Humanities Motel

From behind the bar she tends to drinks
With all eight arms, she minds the keys
That unlock the rooms where patrons would sleep
Shiny black hair falls about her face
As she listens intently leaning over the bar
with only one exposed breast in the middle of her chest
She smiles and laughs
As I, alone, from a small table, not far away, curious
My eyes following her every move
Her henna tatoos
Her eyes, mysterious brown pools
And though she never speaks
I hear her voice, expressed as poems
Poetic thoughts floating
Trapped in a thin glass tank of water
bubbling up in sentences behind her,

"I am water, fluid
I am air, moving
I am fire, consuming
I am earth, stationary
Welcome to the motel of humans"

In the mirrored bar, behind her
I see my face, eyes wide peering
Into the glass tank poised behind her
Where the souls of man are ethereal fluid
Rising up to a ghostly surface
In frenetic bubbles, then disappearing.

With one arm she busies herself mixing a drink
Smiling, she pretends not to notice me
And with another she gropes beneath her thrown, the bar
Suddenly pointing towards me with yet another, and winks
Gracefully sliding the drink toward me
Concealing in another outstretched hand
Reaching from underneath the bar, with a smile revealing
through long slowly uncurling fingers
A key, to a room numbered destiny

Stephen Settles,
Miami, Sept. 2002