It’s coffee and big windows. On Van Buren Street.
The crowd from one side to the other move in unison
When the lights say so. Go.
The rumble of the trains overhead for louder talk.
Or pause until it’s gone by.

I don’t touch the stuff. Coffee.
“What do you want from me?”

Again trains rumble overhead.
Going east this time.
Better yet write your demands
on napkins.
The blank side without the shop logo.

Demands.
“Do you know who I am?”
Van Buren street, busy.
The big buildings. Viaducts.
Coffee. Sandwich shops.
Downtown.
People in downtown dress.

Press themselves into seats
in these establishments.

“Do you know who I am?”
Just a lonely man really.
With a camera however
He does powerful things.

Included in her demands
Which he pockets.
“Going forward we’ll never come here again.” (glo)

I saw him and others saw him the strike the white man.
Unprovoked.
One man screamed,
“Don’t bring that shit around me and my daughter.”
In his arms his only child. Asleep.
Sunday night. Twilight.
The train had left the hub.
Southbound at dusk.
Southbound and most seats are filled.
From end to end.

I saw when he crossed from another car.
Followed by two dames. Two carriages,
One boy. One girl.

A Newport light 100 cigarette.
And the hapless white man.
After the cigarette lit, I saw him strike the man with his fist.
He’d declared he would as he took a long pull. Oh so long.

Melee, fight.
A man has a right to defend himself.
In the aisles no one would help him.
These thugs. Three of them now.
Children themselves.
He speaks for them somehow.
Ply them, supply them with spirit.
Can smell it on their breath.

Venom on their lips and their fists.
They beat him about the head.

I saw the man, just glimpses of him at this point.
Through all of this the train had not gone far.
They pushed him off at Bryn Mawr. (glo)

Smoking in the cooler.

The general store/gas station.
Prospect street.
Through the storeroom and kitchen
And to the right.

“We’re going to get robbed.
Just a hunch,” she said.
Nonplussed.

In the cooler.
With the beer and wine.
Chilled goods.

A motley crew of burnouts.
The rumpled blue shirted store manager.
One way mirror like
the glass doors
of the cooler.

The graveyard shift
A small town.

No cameras anywhere around.

Unmistakable though
from where she stands
The masked man and the gun.

Unmistakable the man
behind the mask
her second husband. (glo)

Brian (To Hoping The Phone Never Rings At This Number)

With your envy Brian.
With your wanderlust.
In the society pages.
Small towns midwest.
Like cities war torn.
Lives in his wake.
For envy.

Have you done your worst,
Brian?

Have you everything undone?
The voice reports:
"this number is temporarily out of service. (glo)

The Sleeping Giant In Their Sights

Red bugs, insects.
Leave a sensation of skin aflame.
Burning.
2:30 a.m. Lights on quickly.
Cigarette lighter
in hand to burn the lot of them.
Black spots blue couch.
Seek and destroy the nests.
Pajama pants of different colors tucked into socks.
Summer time.
Even long sleeved tops on
summer nights, since Winter.

Since Dartanyan pointed them out.
Good friend. Dartanyan.
His brother right behind him.
Since then, February, there abouts.
Bare skin, around the witching hour.
Searching. The sleeping Giant. (glo)

I am a fifty-year old civil servant/poet trying to overcome a middle class upbringing. I have had one full-length book (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press) and a few shorter-length books published, plus many more in magazines. The following is submission is of shorter poems with a futuristic slant. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Michael Ceraolo, 27600 Chardon Road #253, Willoughby Hills, Ohio 44092

Cloud Nine

-the code name
for the weather machine
now used as a weapon of war

Handbags and Gladrags

Now,
instead of buying items
with the designer's name on them,
for a higher price you could have
the designer's name imprinted on your skin

School Is Out

It took many centuries for the great change to take place,
but many worlds finally adapted Auden
for the educational curricula:
Thou shalt not commit a pseudo-science

Color My World

The sea remained its coat of many colors,
while on land
the gray mountains had become covered;
the white ice had gone missing;
and all had evolved into a true dichotomy:
either the lush green of the tropics
or the sere brown sands of the desert

Cortes the Killer

Earth germs did the same dirty work
on literal New Worlds
that they had done on the figurative ones

Blackbird

You and all your fine-feathered friends
were the Cassandras of the coming climate
unheeded until the changes were already inside the gates

-Michael Ceraolo
Thank you for your consideration.