The Silent Jukebox

The Silent Jukebox

(“That man never thought of being kind; he persecuted and killed the poor, the needy, and the helpless.” Psalm 109:16)

The jukebox no longer played tunes
for a dime, for a quarter, for a dollar.
It was crying at the violence and the music
was left out in the rain.
We stopped listening to the words a
long time ago.

There were too many who
refused
to be soothed and
the moments passed without a single
rose breaking the mood the weeds had strewn
across the table.

No one knew why the music no longer played,
cigar smoke broke the air gray and blue. The
booth for
two
no longer was occupied. There were rips in
the cushions,
there was a disturbance in time. One came
early, one arrived late, they used to dine
together, now they were separate ghosts.
Coffee winced down their throats at opposing
sides of the day.

There was no way to explain how the diner became
so thick with the heartbreak that cracked the days
with silence. Some would blame, some would
write computer code,
some would pray,
some would divide it all into rows and columns.
But the soul

Needed something more than pop songs to
right the wrongs. On the other side of town
no one knew that coffee was poured here without
a sound.