All the way to the moon.

[Jerrybaldy]

Jenny is sat beside me, pinching clouds of cotton candy,
Billy bites his lip and draws circles in spilt ketchup.
I am playing dad, eating a burger, smiling big and strong.
I mentally undress the waitress with the hazel eyes,
my masochistic mind blesses her with hairy breasts.
A bluebottle fly lands on Billy's ketchup, he swipes and misses.
'Good try, my son', I wink the paternal wink
that my father used to employ.
'Are you feeling okay?',
that's Jenny with the candy floss stained face
and the golden curls.
'I'm good thanks babe', that's me with the car keys.
The fly lands on the waitress,
a man with his tie loosened and a throbbing neck,
drips sweat from his nose to his burger.
A woman with an angry mole on her cheek and a baby in a buggy,
slips her tongue through the eye of a donut.
Billy has a plastic toy, quite like a million others.
Maybe in a line they could reach the moon.
I do the maths.
Maybe we should be feeding the ducks instead.
I draw an X in the tomato sauce, a kiss for Billy,
smudge the strawberry, spun on Jenny's face.
I smile at the waitress, she grimaces back.
I never fancied her anyway.

[Delta40]

Nice and prosey but still very effective Jerry. You capture moments wonderfully and place us all right there outside the cafe, looking in as keen observers of human life.

[Jerrybaldy]

Prosey? Fair shout. .Like to think that its recognisable as a moment in time. Job then done. , slap back , return to normal, suck jumper sleeve.

[MystyrMystyry]

Quite compelling snapshot(s), with an eerie background air, a certain malevolence even like someone's about to erupt in frustration of being lonely though surrounded. Good one JB!

[Bar22do]

I see you all on that spot in that moment so clearly, but those two especially:

a man with his tie loosened and a throbbing neck,
drips sweat from his nose to his burger.
A woman with an angry mole on her cheek and a baby in a buggy,
slips her tongue through the eye of a donut.

How awful! You do like people, don't you.

I'd say "good job, Jerry", but I doubt you have worked hard on this. It flows effortlessly as I suspect it did from your mind straight to your typing fingers.

Jenny's face/waitress

adorable! (and saves the poetic side! he he - not the only pair)

I'm envious of Jenny and Billy, of their strawberries, cotton candies, their incorrigible, genial dad, their carelessness. Keep writing this kind of "prose."

[Bar22do]

And yeah: "all the way to the moon" - one plastic duck, one real duck, one plastic duck, one real duck, wing in wing.

[paradoxical]

I liked the pace and narrative style of this. It was a good read. I didn't sense any frustration or loneliness, more of a moment in time captured.

[firefangled]

I congratulate you for the slow-mo you created with your words. This was very cinematic in nature, appropriately lusty, perfectly quirky, and underneath it all a stream of fatherly love...a lot to artfully squeeze into the moment it takes for a drop of sweat to make its way to a burger.

[Jerrybaldy]

Thank you all for your comments.

[AuntShecky]

Yeah, it is kinda of "prose-y," but that can be repaired with a more unified sense of line breaks; also dumping some of the extraneous words.

More to the point, I see this as a "tracking shot", a la Martin Scorsese (had to "Google" the spelling of his last name.)

I liked the bit about the "angry mole." Maybe it was the bluebottle fly disguising himself!