It’s another balmy day in paradise.
I push down the plunger in the French
Press, inhaling the earthy aroma of
the blackest of coffees called Community.
The morning paper lies on the coffee table
waiting for its unfolding, opening and
adjusting shake. “Sneaking Sally Through
The Alley” is dancing out of the Boze, WWOZ
accommodating its listeners with the
best music in the country, bar none.
Noise from the street wafts through the
open French doors: the rummmm-rummmm
of the city bus, the high-pitched laughter
of kids on Christmas break, the artificially
cheerful greeting of “order when you’re ready!”
coming from McD’s drive-through so often
that it’s become just another sound like
the bus or the cat’s meow.
The newspaper serves up last night’s murder
du jour as well as the professionally whitened smiles
of the uppercrust partiers of the Social Scene –
Not on the same page, of course.
I get up from the couch, look out the front window
and marvel how the bad and the good
co-exist in the same city on the same
day and how complacent we all are that
it is so.
______________
Shared on dVerse Poet’s Pub.
Charlotte Hamrick 
enjoyed your capture of the moment…the world around you…the inner world, reflecting… sometimes it’s hard to understand how the good and bad can exist so close together in an almost harmony..yes..think we are complacent in a way..
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bad and good co-exist everywhere
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I love New Orleans and have lived there myself (once as a child and one summer in my twenties). You have captured the sound of the city well… I can smell the Community coffee.
http://lkkolp.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/these-final-days-of-2011/
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Yes, so true…good and bad exist side by side. We can focus on one or we can focus on the other. Let’s hope that 2012 brings more good to focus on than evil.
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wow this is a great write…love all the textures of your morning…and i want some french press right now as well…smiles…the good and bad, they go together like peaches and cream it seems…have yet to find one without the other….
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oh and happy new year! smiles.
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Good point. Love the way you expressed it in these lines:
“The newspaper serves up last night’s murder
du jour as well as the professionally whitened smiles”
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No where like N’Awleans to bring the sweet and bitter so close together in one fine sassy meditation of the moment. All the particulars sing. – Brendan
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I really enjoyed this. And, I adore Community coffee!
“The morning paper lies on the coffee table
waiting for its unfolding, opening and
adjusting shake”
Marvelous writing.
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Wonderful snapshot of your day, your beautiful city…the good and the bad that mingles in every day, every place. Tres bien fait!
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You said at the pub that your were pensive at the end of the year, and that’s something I relate to. I also appreciate your observation here about the good and bad co-existing. I’ve noted it in city life from one street corner to the next – the sometimes shocking juxtapositions. Life just seems to be like that, birth and death, ugliness and beauty, pain and pleasure all mixed up.
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New Orleans is still in upheaval, I know… large cities attract all sorts of contradictions, all sorts of folks who have different aims (some good, some really bad), and it’s wise of you to notice this. New Orleans will rise again, but too bad about the pervasiveness of McDonald’s when there is so much great local food there! Peace, Amy
http://sharplittlepencil.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/fred-weintraub-will-never-rest-in-peace-or-otherwise/
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