Ellyn Maybe: California Poets Part 9, Two Poems

Ellyn Maybe

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Ellyn Maybe

Two Poems

Kafka

I saw Kafka lurking behind the Old-New Synagogue near Old Town Square.

He was beautiful, frail, an alphabet weaved through his hair.

When I told him how long the lines were at the Foreigners Police. he said same line since 1916.

Look closely. Someone's aunt is escaping the famines in Ireland.

This city of comings and goings.

Someone's leaving Prague. It's late '68.

It started with guitars and ended with calluses.

Smetana and I sit with opera glasses.

Heaven has box seats for the human condition.

We don't need a program by now.

History repeats itself more often than a cliché in a murder mystery.

Smetana piped in, we are walking in a city made both beautiful and tragic by people.

Don't you see the buildings full of paintings, sculptures and moonlight?

Our bridges, cobblestones, our stories unfurl as magnificent as a sailboat on the Vlatava.

We were given another chance.

Red is the color of blood, but it is also the color of velvet.

Kafka said my sisters wore the former.

He became transparent.

I watched all the emotion the body is truly made of from head to heart.

He said my father and I never saw eye to eye.

It was more stiff upper lip to quiver.

He said it's natural. Fathers don't understand.

They have a practical bone. A cruel bone.

Artists instead have a wishbone.

He smiled and shrugged as he walked past the Franz Kafka Cafe,

the Franz Kafka Museum and the Franz Kafka arcade.

He said artists may go hungry, but will never truly starve as there is always some wish to chew on.

Then he winked.

And was gone.

—Ellyn Maybe

An Ellyn Maybe Birthday Poem, July 10th, 2020

The summer I turned 20, I was dancing in the topography of museums and bakeries, subways and symphonies.

The Actor’s Studio, Village Voice and myriad others took me in as an apprentice.

I had left school and the Valley after a semester seeking a bohemia. I found humidity and lucidity.

I was given a typewriter I still have.

The summer I turned 40, I was swaying in the breeze of 14th century cafes.

Praha was full to the brim with tourists, I was there as a cinema student at FAMU.

Czech New Wave, Old Town Square, Charles Bridge

Living with a bouquet of maps, scattering petals throughout my psyche as history and memory collide.

Who knows where I will be when I turn 60?

—Ellyn Maybe

Author Bio:

Ellyn Maybe, a Southern California based poet, United States Artist nominee, is the author of numerous books, and is widely anthologized. She also has two highly acclaimed poetry/music albums, Rodeo for the Sheepish (Hen House Studios) and Skywriting with Glitter (ellyn & robbie).  Ellyn Maybe & PJ Swift, aka Word Troubadours are collaborating on a poetry book soon to be released. (Mystic Boxing Commission)