Tributes and Laments

Xenia Ave Love Song #2
by John Davis

Speaking: John Paul Davis
Trombone: G. Scott Jones
Trumpet: Mario Abney
Bass: Chris Sloan
Drums: Julian Addison

Recorded live at the Emporium in 2007 as part of the Neighborhood
poetry reading.

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The smokers are out on the bench
as always and the dogs lope
in the shadow of the Emporium
where inside someone’s plunking
on the piano and the old men
sip their coffee and eat soup.
The teenagers fan out and snap
back together like starlings
in flight as they loop down
and back from the Sunrise
to the gas station to HaHa’s
to the skate park and back again.
There’s a local celebrity
doing ollies on his skateboard
while the tourists rubberneck
and scramble for pens and paper,
wanting autographs. Kids glide
and bound down the sidewalk
like bees around the ankles
of their parents, slow as flowers.
Motorcycles lined like dominoes
in front of Dino’s where the music
is good but loud and the college
students and professionals clatter
away on laptop keys in the window
seats. Ripples of laughter roll
from the patio at the Tavern
like the sunset splashing itself
all over the Winds where the ladies
and gentlemen float from their car
alarms to dinner and wine.
Robert’s selling t-shirts with puns
on them and Pierre’s painting
a mural of our kids and Steve McQueen
is having a smoke and Wendy’s
smiling down the block and Joan’s bright
eyes shimmer like the day.
Up on ahead is the US highway
and it goes on and on,
someplace else, wherever
those 18 wheelers go,
but I’m staying right here,
and everything is not fine
but I’m sailing down the avenue,
I fell in love with a place,
and every animal needs a home
the sunset paints it all,
every bird rests its wings
and here we are, here we all are.