TONY DEES
Travel and Food
Over Easy Dreaming
Spellbound, I watched my Waffle Queen with practised ease,
Working her early morning shift.
Treading the oil lake slick through a boated speck of light,
She cast out from her hip a black swirled skirt, a magic trick
Floating before her, fanned with a wrist flick.
A wondrous, Reuben, Joan of Arc,
Gleaming, short-stubbed pistons from a beating heart.
Truth ringing through the breasted plate,
With each required working pivot, turn and angled weight.
And like the Waffle Queen that’s steaming home
With wheelchair turns and tannoyed tones,
She still lands me an easy miracle.
Breaking the surface of my dreams,
Serving my shoreline with a deft, light touch.
Before my very eyes it seems –
Eggs over easy, ever so easy, with smiles on the side.
I drank her syruped, southern drawl, with my coffee cupped fingers
And even now 35 years on the taste still lingers,
And my eyes still smart,
Recalling the simple beauty of her working art.
The Table Turns
From dusk to later on - the Island settles
Fills with special echoes - seabirds cry, safe dogs bark
The sea’s breath laps the land
Re-sounding clear and sweet on every corner of St Mary’s
Built forms, squares of light, just a few left after midnight
Stars awake, a lighthouse blinks on black ink
The sea’s breath shouts the land
For sea comes alive when the land sleeps
In dead of night, through the small hours - the Island finds itself
A boated land, cut down to size
The shorelines constant churn,
Fuelled by wind and tide - the table turns.
Breakfast at La Yedra 2
They stand at the bar
The trucker’s first stop
Silently sip themselves
Awake with a shot
Café sombre grande
Café hombre grande
Rich strong expresso
Sun-steamed milk
Well-dressed machismo
Class in a tall glass
Moonshine to Sunshine
I must arise and go now and get my fresh baked bread
At six am in the moonshine, cold hill stone for my bed
As the rain stops, through my caffeine shot
Eucalyptus comes alive
With a blue glow as I watch there, bark and road combine
Now my breath hot, crust crunch, contented silence finds
Bird song on a night morn with the warm bread deep inside
* *. *
Moving down the hillside he zigzagged through his
lemon grove
Below his feet, the breath of sleep, amongst the green
and yellow
Before my door, a plastic bag, settled on its haunches
Swollen like melons there were twelve of them
Malaga lemons, big as the sky
I squeeze them dry, over fish and oil
Manna from heaven and heaven lies beneath the sky, in lemons
IKEA
Start at the end, end at the start
Leave with a smile, leave with a fart
Whatever you do don’t go alone.
And at the end, sip sip revenge
50-cent coffee cup rules you can bend
Café con leche, hot chocolate, triple expresso
My cup runneth over
Breakfast at Denny’s
They say it promises to be the hottest day of the year, but inside Denny’s,
Polished strips of cold black night bed down against the window blinds grey edge
In the deep slated, thick sliced, silence,
Seated on leatherette the look and colour of a rib burn off,
A seasoned nightshift pause to marinate awhile.
Thoughts form to take on strength and flavour then scramble into light, eggs over easy talk,
Rising pancaked and oversized to a sunburst of fruit-filled laughter …
I’m full; but as time slips through my straw
A sad, conditioned lemonade chill fills the air
Until expresso words pour out “D’ya need more coffee over there?”
I drink pure 100% integrity, rich and thick.
It clears my mind for the long day shift.
As I do, something or someone beyond Denny’s and the Syracuse skyline
Also tastes the real thing, shudders, then turns over for a final bite of low-fat sleep
Night peels away to expose the pale skin of early morning.
Breakfast at La Yedra I
Starts in a door slat thin Manzanilla light, offset by elegance and quiet.
Single shirt skins, white on tan
The leathered look of Sunday’s best
Below the waist all polished black
The bar - the man – the space between.
Then Spain rolls in a barrelled bus, spilling a thick, sweet crowd
A full, dark hilled Oloroso.
A standing sherry glasshouse of mad Oboes
Demanding “servicio” from their barman maestro.
A salted matador, full turned and milled.
Dancing tapas bowls of salsa de tomat with battoned bread,
Circle, oiling and fuelling overhead.
A bubbling bull life down below.
But the crowded sound soon falls to ground
And a heady, full-lipped flamenco fades away.
A retreating bus, a rolling, stoned aficionado,
Feet stomping, full basso humming.
Till only distant hill songs, slow cooking the warm memories
And soft echoing down wired waves,
Bring Spanish soundings and a sense of loss
Through lines that death throes flap,
And trail track, the muffled music man.
A singing Rayburn, wheeled and heated,
And leaving La Yedra’s head, buzzing!
But body mouled, shelled, sucked dry.
A rash of café latche cups
With white throats cut and sugared tongue butts,
Littered, within a cold and wood wormed Albert.
The dummy’s box
His master’s voice long gone.
Ends in a shuttered huddle, and a mind bent double
And buzzing with classical reflections,
Inside a boned and drying fino.