The people, determined
or surrendered to themselves,
float along in human form,
with emotions swelling or weathered,
smoked asunder
diagonally across the town square

I look like who I am,
at the outdoor café,
with necessary reservations

The sun speaks plainly over the cobblestones,
my gaze immersed in coffee black,
while the caffein gilds the scattered idleness
of the town square café
with these letters
and the shrill twelve noon bell strokes
of the Nicolai Church carillon
on the fifteenth of May;
one false hour from the reality of the solar system;
a peculiar pull in humanity,
which no one acknowledges

The bassline from a car in the distance
marks a heavy rhythm,
like a hidden heart in the town hall,
Åke Hodell style

The carillon in the church tower plays a familiar melody,
which, despite its modernity, feels medieval,
in a session at the intersection of ancient imagination
and wind in the hair

Two beautiful ladies meet in an embrace
in front of my notes,
right between birth & death, presumably,
unless something unexpected...

At any moment, a Dylan song passes,
preferably from Blonde on Blonde,
when suddenly a thin drizzle dissolves the ink
on the paper

I lift the tray, return inside,
listening to the societal hum of the ventilation
and voices out in the foyer

A jackdaw flies by,
forgetful of its dinosaur background

Another jackdaw (or the same?) flies up
onto the Town Hall's gutter
with a morsel in its beak;
reaching some kind of lingering truth
within these notes

The sun regains dominance

I look out over the square,
distractedly mulling over my death thoughts

Gloom is sand in the pockets, dirt under nails,
itchiness in the scalp

But I know the coastline out there lies bathing
in wind and glitter
and the piercing cries of terns

The walk home through the kilometers
insists in my body

I see people at the café; their moments expanding
like the calm before the storm, like oil spills on the sea,
unintentional, without cause, held open

Life is a kind of virtual reality

I walk homeward in a playback of some kind of time,
I know that, in a sort of memory of the present
and its borderlands