Coffee with Jesus

You sketched me

at the coffee house,

we absently spoke of drawing



and literature.

I took exception to the manner

in which you drew hands,



I said-

you make them look like machines.

Citing Ingres, I plotted a continuous line.



You agreed.



Critically eying the young

who hovered near decorative book stacks,



I muttered a condescending remark

about nose rings, poets, and tattoos.

But you refused to objectify or malign,



saying- such is the nature

of this establishment and of youth.

I agreed.



We nodded heads

and silently stroked socratic beards

as the artifice of conversation



strolled for awhile longer, into longer

pauses over a couple of dollars worth

of cooling Ethiopian harari.