He stood fifty times his height,
his palms pressed against the glass
separating him from the road in their glamour;
blurred images of car in their splendor –
and there isn’t the
familiar scent of coffee –
I call this pandemonium.

Nothing beats a day in a café
redolent of the finest Arabica,
he’d inhale deeply and recall :
unroasted gives the sweetest scents
of blueberries –
roasted’s entirely different:
fruit, sugar, perfume –
They call this addiction.

Mnemonic – a wind chime
lost in the array of winds.
“You used to be my cup of tea –
I drink coffee now.”
These words slip out of his dry lips,
and a lone tear trickles down a milky cheek;

They all say if they’ve got love,
they don’t need money –

And he’d say if he’s got coffee,
he doesn’t need love –
He calls this heaven.

If nostalgia beset your mind
Come to Ethiopia
A cradle of mankind!

Come to Ethiopia
With no hesitation
Ancient civilization
Will engross your attention!

Before identity quest
You smother
Come to Ethiopia 'cause
Lucy, your  great,
Great grandmother
You could watch closer!
A melting *** of
Over 80 ethnic groups,who
With cordial hospitality,
Will embrace you
Without standing to ceremony
Or formality.

Come to Ethiopia
A mosaic of culture
A true place for adventure!

If you need
An original taste of
Coffee Arabica
Come to Ethiopia
A beacon light to Africa
To freedom fighters
Up to America.

Come to Ethiopia
You will meet there
People who have to borrow
Valour from no where!


Come to Ethiopia
Triggering off no
Feelings of discomfort
Mosques churches abut.

Come to Ethiopia
In a way description that defy
A church by a Muslim name goes by!

Come to Ethiopia
An exemplary country
To deter common enemy
To spur development
In a spectacular bent
Muslims and Christians unite!

Come to Ethiopia
Whose name on the bible
Times beyond number bubble!


Come to Ethiopia
For his persecuted
Followers, the Prophet
Mohammed a high-heaven marked!

Come to Ethiopia
Now on the path of renaissance
Mutual regional growth and
A sustainable  peace
Are whose unwavering stance!

Come to Ethiopia
A country with its own
Alphabet and calendar!
Of course you will wonder
when you get
Yourself eight years younger!

Come to Ethiopia
To feast your eyes
On breathtaking water falls
Scenery and greenery
God-hand-made caves
Endemic animals and birds
Live volcanoes
Obelisks and
Rock-hewn churches.
You shall feast
Your eyes on Harar wall
For the Muslim
A holy city on row four!
You will stand a chance
For Ivangadi
A traditional spectacular dance
Also Konso's terrace.

Come to Ethiopia
Aside from adventure,
You could collect
Invincible athletes
And successful Olympians'
Signature!
Your souvenir picture
With them you may capture!
Of course
You can board 'Ethiopian'
That was there when
The horizon of aviation
History we scan.

Come to Ethiopia
The celebration of
The finding of the true cross
The pilgrimage
To Sheik Hussein Mosque
And epiphany
That have no parallels by any!

Come to Ethiopia
To see first-hand
A country
13 months sunny!

Come to Ethiopia
To enjoy
A Teff-made
Flat bread organic
Found not carcinogenic!
You will gather
Like coffee
Teff and its bread chemistry
Age-old, with it, that were there,
Are blessings
To the rest of the world
Ethiopia Proffer!

Come to Ethiopia
If you want to understand
As to what is meant
By black pride!

If you worry about class
Ethiopia today
Has countless
Hotels shining with stars!

By Alem Hailu G/Kristo

I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.
It makes me anxious, and it’s not only the chemical interaction.
Somehow, I associate it with “adulthood”—reading the news,
Drinking coffee—I can’t tell you how many days of the last few
Years have been spent entirely in this fashion. The coffee
Growing cold and the news colder still. I don’t even taste the
black, fluid drops. I don’t hear the screams of people I read
about. I just want to hold on to something—so I raise the glass
to my lips. I can’t say

the shocking words when my mouth’s full; I can’t tell

about my experience, my privilege, when I’m drinking it.


The production of the commodity

creates a line from some equatorial region
to central America, and my mouth.
I think about the Autumn I worked in a corn-seed
sorting facility. What a short experience—
and yet,
something that weighs heavy on my imagination.
I was a temp worker.
I chose to work there out of shame and guilt for having
missed the deadline for college enrollment.
I could have done anything else; but there were people
there who wanted nothing more than a job. They needed
to be
there.
And I think of the people involved in producing coffee beans

in much the same way.
Removed
from the thing they’re making, as the raw materials are shipped
to places you pay workers more.
Why shouldn’t I swallow with difficulty when faced with the pro-
spect of a person supporting their entire family with the type
of work
I did
reflexively, as a choice?

Now I sit here, reading about North African riots,
a region, where coffee is produced—
ARABICA COFFEE— and I think about what’s sitting
in my cup, how I have
spent more money than they make in a day
to buy
one container
…
and sit here
for an afternoon
doing nothing but reading about their families’ misery.

I am a human parasite.

And like the bedbugs that have crawled meticulously
between my mattress and bedframe, hiding in a safe spot
until they can come out, undetected, and **** my potency.

I sit here, in the comfort of an apartment furnished
and paid for by my father who grows corn in a highly-
mechanized, agricultural society. I take more and more,
festering to the size of a blistering, red dot
blinking in the dark, in the form of the record light on
my voice recorder.
I expect so much more from myself, simply because of
this position of luxury.

But I don’t take time to think about my reaction to these
stories or how I am involved in them, in shaping their plots.
I’m even eating more now
as I’ve nearly lost my concern with avoiding certain super-
markets.
I smile at the greeters, make small talk with the cashiers
whom I am openly exploiting. But it’s ok, because
I worked for a month at a cornseed manufacturing
facility
and I read Marxist Ideology,
and I know about the Arab Spring
and I was against American intervention in Libya
and I disdain the air strikes from robotic planes
(unauthorized by congress)
and I disdain congress
and I support gay marriage
(I stopped eating chicken).
I don’t drive to the suburbs of my city.
I walk and ride my bicycle as much as I feel like.
I use public transportation at times.
I try to get to know women.
I practiced safe ***, once.
I write poetry.
I tell my mom I love her.
I bought my nieces birthday presents.
I’m not overly nice to people of different
ethnicities.
I voted for Obama.
I’m trying.
All these things make it seem less bad
to smile at the cashier.
But then I think about my black studies Professor
who used a walker to come to class
because she fell
and spelled the word Amendment “Admendment”
on the board when talking about Reconstruction.
I think about the war in Syria.
I think of people dying from cholera in Haiti, in 2012
A.D.
I think about fracking and oil spills and …
irrevocable damage to Indian reservations.
I think about football coaches molesting children
and people eating fried butter.
I read about people
upset
with a movie
who protest in the streets for days.

It makes me realize I shouldn’t smile at anyone.
I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.

In that moment, your skin was perfect
Just like the rest of you.
Soft, gentle, pure...
How could I resist?

Here, now, I can see
Our time had a taste like Arabica.
Short, bittersweet, with notes of hazelnut.
But in that instant,
That eternal moment,
There was not one drop of coffee
On your lips.

Because you were the first girl
I almost kissed.
And you were the first girl
I wrote poems about.

I know they didn't rhyme, but
It was the best I could do.
Y'know, poetry was kinda new
To me. But I wrote it for you.

Better?

caramel macchiato flavored coffee with mint cigarette flavored kisses with your dreamboat lover is the quintessence of what i call "perfection".  if there was a way to describe the way your lips feel against mine, i could only describe it as "cigarettes and coffee".  cigarettes and coffee isn't simply consuming caffeine or inhaling tobacco in your lungs, it's sitting on the roof at 1 am looking at the stars with a blanket around the both of you.  it's laying in the grass with a slight breeze blowing making smoke rings between the arduous kisses.  it's simply sipping a vanilla latte on the corner of a new york city street with a cigarette in your hand, making swirls of smoke as more ash forms above the filter,  looking like some sort of bohemian gods. it's walking along a deserted sidewalk in your black jeans and doc martens with a big t-shirt and coke bottle sunglasses on with your lover on your hip and your menthol in one hand and philter in another.  "cigarettes and coffee" is whatever you can interpret as pure bliss; it's simply whatever makes you happy and whatever makes you want to sit in the grass all night and talk about anything and everything.  there's a lot of people that would argue there's no beauty to the feel of tobacco in your lungs and arabica in your mouth, but evidently, they've never tried cigarettes and coffee.

(  
     )


In the silence of cold, quiet,
after midnight hours...wind
audibly pushes branches and
leaves...sends them swaying
and rustling....i hear the rain
falling...like small nails hitting
the neighbor's acrylic eave.

the peace of these unholy hours
empowers me...i feel, i rule the world,
my senses and my mind are sharpest..
while others are asleep and dreaming.

everyone's eyes are closed...mine, too,
yet, i am so awake, i see this cauldron,
where my life's goings-on are stirred by
an unknown force, spinning clockwise,
simmering, nothing burns, or breaks,
for, underneath, its fire burns slow...

good and bad issues mix and join
the stew of old stubborn ones;
daily rigors, wee triumphs blend in,
like a goulash of meat and veggies,
slowly cooking, as fire burns slow,
giving time...............taking time
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::::::::::::::::::::::­­:::::::::::::::::::
the strong aroma of arabica jolts me
from my reverie...it matters not if i
haven't slept......6 am, i'm back to
reality.....lots of work await me
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::::::::::::::::::::­­:::::::::::::::::::
five-pm past, arabica again stands by
me as i watch the orange fires of sunset,
hear the crickets sing, or a frog's croak,
while my rocking thoughts are cradled,
while i enjoy some peace and quiet,
exuded by a fragrant twilight.....it's
that feel-good part of each day...saying
gratitude for every sunrise and sunset,
while my candle's fire burns slow....
........
......
...

Sally

©Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
  January 6, 2021

enter slav digressing with the celt... yeah, saxony, once known as the northern arm's length of parody shaking oiled up speaking saracen sign language: arabica wavy wavy bye bye. you concrete those words in i roof it over, then we can both admire the rich russian vixens dry up their wealth with the saudis - we need television after all - and it’s in 3-d! and it’s 1-d head-banging closure! :)... ;( :x, :s, \: (mouth’s missing but i have a mammoth in malibu -
and my love can’t aim to have the mortgage too - but hey, girl’s heading for the one coin-flip  dolphin clap; and i was a teenager once too... but played grand theft auto 2d throughout asking for a bottle of whiskey and a panda’s / koala’s bothersome diet to hunt sleep); is there some sign language translation of emoji? i just don't have the talents to enter the emoji language and become a *******! or make democracy justly an exclusion of cowards and ******? i can’t do that, let’s utilise charles the third! ‘too busy, too fuzzy,’ well hear and karma sutra the talk of the man, after all the coinage and respecting the hedgehog on his head.

i cleaned it into a hotel like i would into a brothel,
while the suffragettes
looked like the elephant man in niqāb,
and i was ready
with the fist; although i shook less
than i spoke to mouth it off into democracy
continuing the power struggle vetoed with bodies extracted
into the count warranting mourning.
what success is it if a white boy in a western society
can’t leave the nest and establish a taxable one to suit power?
where’s the power then, in the stateless individual?
where is your power to my ******* of being given wife and house
not given? where?!
if i can’t be the individuated pawn power broker you can’t be in power... idiots!
you have to give me the ******* i “desire” to be in power, if you can’t,
you’re not in power! ave augustus ave ego!
try contort the square into a triangle by contorting **** into fck.... ah ****...
you already did... where’s the spanks’ worth of bullseye?!
you germans have no decency in human affairs
than you have to inspect **** movies varied
by wildebeest stampedes
from guernsey into gibraltar in gifs, do you?
well i did **** off a palm tree and got a coconut for an oasis’ worth of thirst.

My Laura
how tomorrow
was your
time lace
with bona
fide séance
in these
highlands of
Arabica here
in America
always vernacular
with a
sound heard
round world  
to triumph
love with
our beliefs.

What pretty words flow,
From carpel tunnel hands!
Fingers click clock on keyboards,
Time sifting like sugar.

Creativity ebbs and flows--
Like the gentle rock
Of cerulean tide,
Lulling soul after soul to sleep.

The smell of arabica,
And chicory soup
Stifles surreptitiously--
(Twentyfourseven)

With admiring eyes
I glance down at the stark white background--
My bones ache for the lush black ink
To be my own words!

But until then I'll sit at the bottom
Of this empty poetry well,
Chain smoking and longing
To be on that **** front page.

Yesterday I spilt the beans,
100% Colombia Arabica.

Daisy, the Border Collie
from Westport in Mayo,

Was on to the # Browny's
in a flash, just as Kaldi's

Goats were, in Ethiopia
circa 850 A.D.

The 250 grams of beans
were no different to a herd

Of sheep scattered on the
hill of Croagh Patrick.

I was the poor shepherd
while Daisy, true to her

Evolutionary inheritance
went after the fleeing flock,

Though not to help put them back
in the bag, she began to eat them!

A night from hell ensued, wooden
floors, long nails, pacing, pacing.

Daisy had her first high, but
today, she is in a sheep dip.