CAFE CAIRO, TRINITY CITY HOTEL
By Gary Singh

Outside, sacred muses hang from rear view
mirrors, on beads, in taxi cabs navigating
ancient Dublin streets, as waterways divide
the merry landscape of locals. Inside Cafe
Cairo, a slice of plastic, room-key muse,
by your laptop, prosaic prefab wafer, oozes
divine commonplace, guiding the keystrokes
as you invent your own canals, on bedspreads
and lobby sofas. This hotel cafe, décor of east
and west, sprinkled with antiques and tony
figurines, bedazzled, its charm alive with
Rumi and Yeats, channeled on these couches
with exotic velvet grooves, black against
maroon, the courtyard awash with sitar sounds
and wall-size mirrors, you twirl the muse to
rolling stacks of glassware snaking pathways
around mahogany tables, a Russian business
meeting, pots of tea and chillout beats. Cafe
Cairo, your liquid temple of secondhand books
and glass, laptop jammed with secret evening
soirees and mysteries to guide you down the
hall where the poet’s masterpiece will hail
those Dublin taxis and their scared fares.

–

Gary Singh is an award-winning travel journalist with a music degree who publishes poetry, paints and exhibits photographs. As a scribe, he’s written nearly 1000 works including travel essays, art and music criticism, profiles, business journalism, lifestyle articles, poetry and short fiction. His poems have been published in The Pedestal, Dirty Chai, The Puritan, Maudlin House and more. Currently, he is the author of The San Jose Earthquakes: A Seismic Soccer Legacy (History Press, 2015). His website is: http://www.garysingh.info.

–

Photo by: Gessy Alvarez