Bubba's Diner....Home Of The Five Cent Coffee.

Bubba's Diner-"Home Of the 5 cent Coffee.

Coffee stained pottery cup,
sits browned by years of
pick me ups and set me downs,
holding a caffeine-laced fix
beneath my bloodshot eyes.

The clatter of dishes and tongues
scrambled like my eggs surrounds me.

The old vinyl stools
in chrome and scarlet poses,
rise in a food speckled formation,
each covered cushion
cracked from the spread
of weary derierres,

The waitress,
a former 1962 barbie doll,
has a beehive, hairdo
heavily sprayed and well behaved.
no wisps of hair
to pester her forehead.
Her fading beauty revealed
in a weary smile,
as she queries,
"More coffee, sir."

I nod and she refills
my adrenaline level.
while overly tattooed
but skilled short order chefs
dance nimbly in the rectangle window.

In greasy, once white aprons,
they flip pancakes off,
tan sausages
and roach the burnt hash brown.

This old train car
holds a few ghosts,
flitting behind me
they were on their way to forever,
but thier exit was derailed.

Now it squats by a highway
that leads to anytown U.S.A.

Each diner in this diner
takes a momentary pause
from their long journies
to destinations unknown.

They chew the fat,
peruse the news, 
and stick chewing gum mementos
under the peeling linoleum tabletops.

I rise to pay my check,
dropping a couple
of dead presidents
from my capital,
and duck out
into the sleeting rain,
with a belly full of grub,
and a nostalgic noseful
of yesterdays revisited.

©-MFB III