I sit, fingers dancing,
while the trumpets' notes are a'prancing,
it seems like music is romancing,
and Beethoven is laughing.

Da da da da, da da da da, the motif continues,
and I am deep within the throes,
of some of the deepest woes,
and Beethoven is laughing.

Don't you see the smile,
the rapid bowing of the bases all the while?
why do you seem to be beguiled?
And Beethoven is laughing.

Tell me, do you not hear the first movement in the third?
Is not the motif to be heard?
do you not get the seemingly absurd
Beethoven is laughing.

LOVE AND LOVERS

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS


Chapter 3

Jon had fallen in love with Bian the instant he saw her. Staring at the Hudson River in early evening through his living room window, Jon wondered how it could have happened. Then he thought he could wonder forever, but it would never matter:  Jon knew he was in love, completely in love.

Jon was not only extremely bright, he was also extremely handsome. Beginning in junior high and then at Andover, he had had a number of girlfriends, which was also the case when he was a Columbia undergraduate.

But Bian was magically different from all his former girlfriends, ineffably so. As a poet, he had come to realize one should never force any creation. By extrapolation, he now realized the same was true about being swept away by Bian. It had happened. Rather than try to understand the miraculous, Jon now should just feel blessed and let himself be awash with joy. Let things naturally unfold, Jon concluded.


“Bian?” said Jon.

“Yes, this is she.”

“This is Jon. Do you have a moment to chat?” asked Jon.

“Yes, I do, Jon,” said Bian.

“How are you? How’s your week going?” asked Jon.

“It’s been busy, but that’s the way it usually is. How are you doing?”, asked Bian.

“The same. I have a question. This Saturday night, the New York Philharmonic is performing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. Would you like to go hear it with me?” asked Jon.

“I’d love to,” replied Bian.

“Wonderful!” replied Jon. “The performance begins at 8. If we take a cab, we should leave about 7:30, so I’ll pick you up about 7:15 at Hartley. How does that sound?” said Jon.

“It sounds great,” said Bian.

“Good. I’ll see you then,” said Jon.

Jon sat in the Hartley lobby waiting for Bian. He had gotten there a bit early. He began to reminisce about how Chad enjoyed playing classical music in their dorm room. Jon’s favorite was Beethoven. Over the years, Jon had listened to about every piece Beethoven had composed:  all of his nine symphonies, all of his piano concertos, all the sonatas, and his “Cycle,” all of his chamber-music pieces. Jon had even seen and heard Beethoven’s opera, FIDELIO. Though Beethoven became deaf, he never lost his “passion,” a quality Jon modestly thought he shared with Beethoven.

“Good evening, Jon,” said Bian as she entered the lobby.

“Good evening, Bian. You look lovely,” said Jon. “Shall we head out?”

Bian nodded.

The two walked to Broadway and caught a cab. They arrived at Lincoln Center in minutes. Attending a performance by the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center was quintessential New York City. Hundreds of music lovers–some in tuxedos and gowns, other in blue jeans–flooded into David Geffen Hall. After the audience quieted down, Jaap van Sweden, the conductor, strolled to the podium accompanied by generous applause. Then the orchestra began to play.

For Jon, listening to any live concerto by Beethoven put him into a dreamlike trance. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. The glorious music wafted over him. In one sense, the performance lasted but seconds; in another, it never ended.

When the performance concluded, Jon asked Bian, “I’d like to take you to Terra Blue, a nightspot in Greenwich Village. Do you think you’d enjoy that?

“Sure. Sounds like fun,” said Bian.

As the two sat at a table in Terra Blue, Bian said, “You know, Jon, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund state that on average 10,000 children around the world die of starvation every day. These global agencies, to my mind and heart, care more about statistics than the well-being of children on Earth. This is unconscionable, and it’s only one of hundreds of injustices perpetrated on the poor throughout the world.”

Jon sat in silence for several moments assimilating both the statistics Bian had just shared, as well as the deep, emotional effect they were having on him.

“I remember too well the stories my father told me about the war as I was growing up–not just the killing, the endless brutality on both sides, the utter destruction not only of human lives, but also of entire villages and the human lives that were ended by both bullets and ******, and the world is continuing to commit atrocities on every continent, in every nation, in countless cities, in small towns–everywhere. Humanity now faces the existential threats of climate change and nuclear holocaust.”

“You’re right, Bian. You’re absolutely right,” said Jon.

The two continued talking about these and other related issues, and Jon realized anew how much he loved her, and now, how much he respected her as a human being.

Beethoven choral racing through frozen forests
through rain and frost storms
We are carried on fast horse through winter
against furious Beethoven

Making love on lost sheets of saffron and straw
a frozen speeding vision explodes into your corner

racing fierce on pianoforte
Beethoven one note pure
against humanity

Antara aku dan Beethoven
Tidak ada kamu

Aku tidak mendengarmu dalam
Sonata Terang Bulan
Kamu tidak meredam dan menelan
Kesedihan, pun kepedihan

Kamu tidak memantulkan
Wajah remang bulan
Kala gugurnya di
Hilir redup sungai

Kamu berteriak
Terlalu lantang
Di malam hari

Sedang antara aku dan Beethoven
Tidak ada kamu
Kami menjalin kesedihan
Berdua saja

Aku dalam kata
Beethoven,
Dalam denting

Kamu berteriak
Terlalu lantang.

Sayangnya
Kami tidak mendengar
Jeritanmu
Kami tidak mau mendengar
Amukmu

Piano Sonata nomor empat belas,
Kuhanyutkan surat tak berbalas.

Di C kres minor,
Aku takut ia terdampar,

Opus dua puluh tujuh nomor dua,
Karena kau jeritkan amuk tanpa duka.

It sits, poisonous
Dripping sorrow over the windowsill
I drove to the Skyway,
Dropped a heart over the edge.
Watched it splash under
It took a couple seconds to hit.

This apartment, I can't find any matches.
Beethoven's wife,
It's legend that she would play a scale,
All except the last note- and Beethoven-
awake asleep in between dreams
not waking to her kisses would
get up to finish it.
She probably knew everything about him.
I bet she wept when he went deaf.
I like to think he wrote her a sonata, or two.

It's raining outside.
Right behind the poison on my windowsill.
A candle would make this place better

Where are the matches?
Beethoven's wife would never have betrayed him.
Do re mi fa so la ti-

The beast rolls around the corner,
its head rearing, taunting and playing
the piano keys like Beethoven on his last hurrah,
proudly smothering my chest with an ache,
an emptiness.

"Only between us," you say, a glance my way,
a reassurance, with a cloying smile. My heart tightens,
"No," I was about to answer, but my thoughts move,
the dictionary in my head turning "no" into a, "Yes, of course".
Turning my truth into a lie,
my heart the severing line.

Giving my frown the definition of a smile.

Beethoven still plays the piano in my mind,
playing his wonderful concertos and sonatas,
this deaf man.
And you can call me friend, your comrade,
your companion, in that less of a jumbled dictionary of yours,
filled with dog-eared pages and highlighted words.

"You matter to me," I say with every ounce of conviction.

You can hear me, but unlike Beethoven you never make a sound.

And I am the broken recorder, testing my conviction.

But as Beethoven is deaf,
in this mental dictionary of mine,
filled with contradiction,
you are the only word
whose definition is friend and foe,
both one and the same.
Too near to the line to be different.

And the strange thing perhaps,
is that it has never changed.

Instead of homework,
I, a curious and
strange child
ran into a library
of multiverses.

To the left was Macbeth,
and to the right was Dorian Gray.
Amidst my tardiness and slight
disarray, I found Beethoven.

He, so volatile,
so angry and loving,
so deceitful and charming
exhausting then relaxing.

He composed
infectious melodies
of strings and brass that
rumbled like thunderstorms
but these thunderstorms
rained heavily on me,
washing away negativity,
blooming flowers
of unique beauty.

Statements in musical
form, everlasting, ever flowing
lead me away from a
place of sitting in silence
and not knowing
what notes are like
when they dance .

With his outstretched arms
I found an embrace in
an immortal man
with a loyal stance.

Time means nothing,
when floating on cloud nine.
Beethoven transcends time
and with him, everything
is just fine.    

I once found Beethoven
in a library and since then
he has never left me.

ignore all possible concepts and possibilities ---
ignore Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust ---
just make it, babe, make it:
a house  a car   a belly full of beans
pay your taxes
****
and if you can't ****
copulate.
make money but don't work too
hard --- make somebody else pay to
make it --- and
don't smoke too much but drink enough to
relax, and
stay off the streets
wipe your *** real good
use a lot of toilet paper
it's bad manners to let people know you **** or
could smell like it
if you weren't
careful

It was a cold night for a concert. There was frost on the windscreen as we got into the car for the short drive to this city church. We drove because we were going to be late, and it was cold, and would be likely to be colder still when the concert was over. I had wondered if part one would be enough. Could Bach and Rameau be enough? Might the musical appetite cope with Mozart and Beethoven too? Were we about to sit down to a large meal, possibly in the wrong order. Can the cheese course be a transcendental experience I wondered? Bach to begin certainly, a substantial starter with one of the mid period keyboard toccatas and two ‘distant’ preludes and fugues, but then a keyboard suite by Rameau?
 
When I listen to Beethoven though I want to hear a work on its own, unencumbered round about with other musics.  A recent experience of several hours driving to hear a single Beethoven symphony has remained close and vivid, and an experience that brought me close to tears. So I imagine that I might only hear Op.110 to make that opening sequence of chords so ominously special. The introduction seems to come from nowhere and does not connect with musical past, except perhaps the composer’s own past. It is as though the pianist puts on a pair of gloves imbued with the spirit of the composer, and these chords appear . . . and what is there that might possibly prepare the listener for the journey that pianist and listener embark upon?  Certainly not the soufflé of Mozart’s K.332.
 
The audience is hardly a smattering of coats, hats and grey hair. There is another piano recital in town tonight and this is but the artist’s preview of a forthcoming concert at a major venue. Our pianist is equipping herself for a prestigious engagement and sensibly recognizes the need to test out the way the programme flows in front of an audience, and in a provincial church where she is not entirely unknown. I admire this resolve and wonder a little at the long-term planning which makes this possible and viable.
 
Now a figure in black walks out from the shadows to stand by her piano. Coming from stage right she places left her hand firmly on the mirror-black case above the keyboard. She looks at her audience briefly, and makes a bow, almost a curtsey, an obeisance to her audience and possibly to those distant spirits who guard the music she is to play. We will not see her face again until the next time she will stand at the piano to acknowledge our applause after the Bach she is about to play. Her slightly more than shoulder-length hair is cut to flow forward as she holds herself to play; her face is often hidden from us, her expression curiously blank. Perhaps she has prepared herself to enter a deep state of concentration that admits no recognition of those sitting just in front of her. Her dress is long and black with a few sparking threads to catch the careful lighting. Without these occasional glimmers her ****** movement would be unnoticeable. As it is the way the light is caught is subtle and quietly playful, though not enough to distract, only remind us that though in black she is wearing the kind of starry sky such as you might perceive in crepuscular time.
 
Thus, we already sense so much before she has played a note there is a firm slightly dogged confidence and reverence here in her approach to instrument and audience. And in the opening bars of the Bach toccata that is manifest; and not just a confidence born out of some strategy against nervousness, but a ritual of welcoming to this music that now spills out into the partially darkened church. The sonorousness and balance of the piano’s tone surprises. It is not a fine piano, but it has qualities that she seems to understand. There is a degree of attentive listening to herself that enables her to control dynamics and act resolutely on the structure of the music. When the slow section of this four-part toccata appears there is a studied gentleness and restraint that belies any ****** led gesture or manner. Her stance and deliberation at the keyboard remain determined and in control, unaltered by the music’s message. She does not pull her body backwards as seems the custom with so many who feel they have to show us they are stroking and coaxing such gentleness and restraint out of the keyboard.
 
As the final fugato of the toccata flows at almost twice the speed I’ve ever heard it, my concentration begins to disengage. It is too fast for me to follow the voices, I miss the entries, and the smudged resonance of the texture hides those details I have grown over so many years to know and love. This is Glen Gould on speed, not the toccata that resides in my musical memory. I am aware of missing so much and my attention floats away into the sound of it all. It seems to be all sound and not the play of music.
 
In this stage of disengagement I sense the tense quality of her right leg pedalling with the tip of a reddish shoe just visible, deft, tiny flicks of movement. She turns her face away from the keyboard frequently, looking away from the keyboard through the choir to the high altar; and for a moment we see her upturned face, a blank face, possibly with little or no make up, no jewellery. A plain young woman, mid to late thirties perhaps, and not a face marked by children or a busy teaching life, but a face focused on knowing this music to a point at which there is almost a detachment, where it becomes independent of her control, flowing momentarily beyond herself.
 
Then she reins the toccata in, reoccupies it; she is seeking closure for herself and for her audience whose attention for a short while has been, as the Quakers say, gathered. Gathered into a degree of silence, when breathing and the body’s sense and presence of itself disappear, momentarily, and musical listening moves from a clock time to a virtual time. There is a slowing down, an opening out, even though in reality’s metronomic time-field there is none.
 
There is a hesitation. With more Bach to follow, should we applaud? With relief after holding the flight of time’s arrow in our consciousness, just for those concluding minutes and seconds we acknowledge and applaud - the beginning of the concert.

(poems from the Chinese translated by Arthur Waley)

Last night the clouds scattered away;
A thousand leagues, the same moonlight scene.
When dawn came, I dreamt I saw your face;
It must have been that you were thinking of me.
In my dream, I thought I held your hand
And asked you to tell me what your thoughts were.
And you said: ‘I miss you bitterly . . . “

As Helen drifted into sleep the source of that imagined voice in her last conscious moment was waking several hundred miles away. For so long now she was his first and only waking thought. He stretched his hand out to touch her side with his fingertips, not a touch more the lightest brush: he did not wish to wake her. But she was elsewhere. He was alone. His imagination had to bring her to him instead. Sometimes she was so vivid a thought, a presence more like, that he felt her body surround him, her hand stroke the back of his neck, her ******* fall and spread against his chest, her breath kiss his nose and cheek. He felt conscious he had yet to shave, conscious his rough face should not touch her delicate freckled complexion . . . but he was alone and his body ached for her.

It was always like this when they were apart, and particularly so when she was away from home and full to the brim with the variously rich activities and opportunities that made up her life. He knew she might think of him, but there was this feeling he was missing a part of her living he would never see or know. True, she would speak to him on the phone, but sadly he still longed to read her once bright descriptions that had in the past enabled him to enter her solo experiences in a way no image seemed to allow. But he had resolved to put such possible gifts to one side. So instead he would invent such descriptions himself: a good, if time-consuming compromise. He would give himself an hour at his desk; an hour, had he been with her, they might have spent in each other’s arms welcoming the day with such a love-making he could hardly bare to think about: it was always, always more wonderful than he could possibly have imagined.

He had been at a concert the previous evening. He’d taken the train to a nearby town and chosen to hear just one work in the second part. Before the interval there had been a strange confection of Bernstein, Vaughan-Williams and Saint-Saens. He had preferred to listen to *The Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. There was something a little special about attending a concert to hear a single work. You could properly prepare yourself for the experience and take away a clear memory of the music. He had read the score on the train journey, a journey across a once industrial and mining heartland that had become an abandoned wasteland: a river and canal running in tandem, a vast but empty marshalling yard, acres of water-filled gravel pits, factory and mill buildings standing empty and in decay. On this early evening of a thoroughly wet and cold June day he would lift his gaze to the window to observe this sad landscape shrouded in a grey mist tinted with mottled green.

Andrew often considered Berlioz a kind of fellow-traveller on his life’s journey of music. Berlioz too had been a guitarist in his teenage years and had been largely self-taught as a composer. He had been an innovator in his use of the orchestra and developed a body of work that closely mirrored the literature and political mores of his time.  The Symphonie Fantastique was the ultimate love letter: to the adorable Harriet Smithson, the Irish actress. Berlioz had seen her play Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (see above) and immediately imagined her as his muse and life’s partner. He wrote hundreds of letters to her before eventually meeting her to declare his love and admiration in person. A friend took her to hear the Symphonie after it had got about that this radical work was dedicated to her. She was appalled! But, when Berlioz wrote Lélio or The Return to Life, a kind of sequel to his Symphonie, she relented and agreed to meet him. They married in 1833 but parted after a tempestuous seven years. It had surprised Andrew to discover Lélio, about which, until quite recently, he had known nothing. The Berlioz scholar David Cairns had written fully and quite lovingly about the composition, but reading the synopsis in Wikipedia he began to understand it might be a trifle embarrassing to present in a concert.

The programme of Lélio describes the artist wakening from these dreams, musing on Shakespeare, his sad life, and not having a woman. He decides that if he can't put this unrequited love out of his head, he will immerse himself in music. He then leads an orchestra to a successful performance of one of his new compositions and the story ends peacefully.

Lélio consists of six musical pieces presented by an actor who stands on stage in front of a curtain concealing the orchestra. The actor's dramatic monologues explain the meaning of the music in the life of the artist. The work begins and ends with the idée fixe theme, linking Lélio to Symphonie fantastique.

Thoughts of the lovely Harriet brought him to thoughts of his own muse, far away. He had written so many letters to his muse, and now he wrote her little stories instead, often imagining moments in their still separate lives. He had written music for her and about her – a Quintet for piano and winds (after Mozart) based on a poem he’d written about a languorous summer afternoon beside a river in the Yorkshire Dales; a book of songs called Pleasing Myself (his first venture into setting his own words). Strangely enough he had read through those very songs just the other day. How they captured the onset of both his regard and his passion for her! He had written poetic words in her voice, and for her clear voice to sing:

As the light dies
I pace the field edge
to the square pond
enclosed, hedged and treed.
The water,
once revealed,
lies cold
in the still air.

At its bank,
solitary,
I let my thoughts of you
float on the surface.
And like two boats
moored abreast
at the season’s end,
our reflections merge
in one dark form.

His words he felt were true to the model of the Chinese poetry he had loved as a teenager, verse that had helped him fashion his fledgling thoughts in music.

And so it was that while she dined brightly with her team in a Devon country pub, he sat alone in a town hall in West Yorkshire listening to Berlioz’ autobiographical and unrequited work.

A young musician of extraordinary sensibility and abundant imagination, in the depths of despair because of hopeless love, has poisoned himself with *****. The drug is too feeble to **** him but plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by weird visions. His sensations, emotions, and memories, as they pass through his affected mind, are transformed into musical images and ideas. The beloved one herself becomes to him a melody, a recurrent theme [idée fixe] which haunts him continually.

Yes, he could identify with some of that. Reading Berlioz’ own programme note in the orchestral score he remembered the disabling effect of his first love, a slight girl with long hair tied with a simple white scarf. Then he thought of what he knew would be his last love, his only and forever love when he had talked to her, interrupting her concentration, in a college workshop. She had politely dealt with his innocent questions and then, looking at the clock told him she ‘had to get on’. It was only later – as he sat outside in the university gardens - that he realized the affect that brief encounter might have on him. It was as though in those brief minutes he knew nothing of her, but also everything he ever needed to know. Strange how the images of that meeting, the sound of her voice haunted him, would appear unbidden - until two months later a chance meeting in a corridor had jolted him into her presence again  . . . and for always he hoped.

After the music had finished he had remained in the auditorium as the rather slight audience took their leave. The resonance of the music seemed to be a still presence and he had there and then scanned back and forward through the music’s memory. The piece had cheered him, given him a little hope against the prevailing difficulties and problems of his own musical creativity, the long, often empty hours at his desk. He was in a quiet despair about his current work, about his current life if he was honest. He wondered at the way Berlioz’ musical material seemed of such a piece with its orchestration. The conception of the music itself was full of rough edges; it had none of that exemplary finish of a Beethoven symphony so finely chiseled to perfection.  Berlioz’ Symphonie contained inspired and trite elements side by side, bar beside bar. It missed that wholeness Beethoven achieved with his carefully honed and positioned harmonic structures, his relentless editing and rewriting. With Berlioz you reckoned he trusted himself to let what was in his imagination flow onto the page unhindered by technical issues. Andrew had experienced that occasionally, and looking at his past pieces, was often amazed that such music could be, and was, his alone.

Returning to his studio there was a brief text from his muse. He was tempted to phone her. But it was late and he thought she might already be asleep. He sat for a while and imagined her at dinner with the team, more relaxed now than previously. Tired from a long day of looking and talking and thinking and planning and imagining (herself in the near future), she had worn her almost vintage dress and the bright, bright smile with her diligent self-possessed manner. And taking it (the smile) into her hotel bedroom, closing the door on her public self, she had folded it carefully on the chair with her clothes - to be bright and bright for her colleagues at breakfast next day and beyond. She undressed and sitting on the bed in her pajamas imagined for a brief moment being folded in his arms, being gently kissed goodnight. Too tired to read, she brought herself to bed with a mental list of all the things she must and would do in the morning time and when she got home – and slept.

*They came and told me a messenger from Shang-chou
Had brought a letter, - a simple scroll from you!
Up from my pillow I suddenly sprang out of bed,
And threw on my clothes, all topsy-turvey.
I undid the knot and saw the letter within:
A single sheet with thirteen lines of writing.
At the top it told the sorrows of an exile’s heart;
At the bottom it described the pains of separation.
The sorrows and pains took up so much space
There was no room to talk about the weather!

Yochana
sits beside
Angela
her best friend

Miss G plays
Beethoven
on the old
gramophone
piano piece
sonata

Yochana
likes this one
the music
stirs her up
conjures up
images
desires

Angela
looks behind
at the back
of the class

she sees them
the two boys
sitting bored
eyeing her

Rowland pokes
out his tongue
but Benny
has that smile
that hair quiff

how is she
he lip talks
Yochana?

she turns back
to the front

he's looking
she informs
Yochana
that Benny

I don't care
about him
Yochana
says softly
(not wanting
to disturb
Beethoven)

but she does
she senses
his hazel
eyes touching
her body

bringing out
hot flushes
distracts her
emotions
from music

Beethoven
(poor Ludwig)
pushed aside

and she feels
Benny’s eyes
hazel warm
look inside.

Snarling Cup of Coffee    




I like to start my day with a hot cup of coffee
I pound down the coffee
First thing I do every day
as the dawning sun
Lights up my lonesome room

Yeah, but not just a simple cup of java Joe, but a ******* snarling sarcastic smarmy cup of coffee

I mean, - we are talking about an alcoholic, all speed ahead, always hot, always fresh, always there when I need it, angry, attitude talk to the hand Ztude, bad, bad assed, beats breaking, beatnik, bluesy, bitter, ******, bombs away, capitalistic, caffeinated up the ***, cinematic, communistic, Colombian grown, Costa Rican inspired, Cowabunga to the max, crazy assed, devilishly angelic, divine, divinely inspired, dyslexic, epic, extreme vetting, evil eye, expensive, ****** vision inducing, Ethiopian coffee house brewed, euphoric, freaky, freazoid, foxy, Frenched kissed, French brewed, funkified, foxy lady, graphic, GOD in my coffee, with Allah, Ganesh, Jesus, Kali, Buddha, Christians, Durga, Hindus, Mohamed, Jesus and Mo and their friend, the cosmic bar maid, Sai Babai, Shiva, Taoists,

Zoroastrians, drinking my god ****** coffee in Hell;

growling, gnarly, happy, hard as ice, Hawaian blessed, high as a kite, hippie, hip, hipster, hip hoppy, hot as hell yet strangely sweet as heaven, jazzy, jealous, Kerouac approved, kick ***, kick my ******* *** to Tuesday, kick down the doors and take no prisoners, grown in the Vietnam highlands by exVietcong, Guatemalan grown, kiss ***, illegal in every state, imported from all over the ******* world,

insane, lovely, loony, lonely, lonesome, malodorous mean old rotten, *******, nasty, narcotic, never whatever, never meh, never cold, not approved by the CIA, not approved by DHS, not approved for human consumption by the FDA, not your daddy’s sissified corporate cup of coffee, NOT DECAFE coffee, not your Denny’s truck driver weak as brown water cup of fake coffee, not your establishment friendly cup of coffee, Not your FBI coffee, Not FAKE Herbal coffee substitute, but a real cup of coffee, not your farmer brothers dinner crap, not made in America for Americans, not safe for work, not your Starbucks average expensive overpriced ****** corporate chain cup of coffee, Not pretentious, Not White House approved, not State Department safe, nuclear, Not Patriotic, operatic, Peets’s coffee approved,

paranoid, pornographic, psychotic, pontific, politically aware, rapping, rhyming, right here, right now in River city, rock and roll up the Yazoo, sad, sadistic, sarcastic, sassy, satanic, schizoid, *******, silly, ****, smarmy, smelly, smooth, snarky, snarling, stupid, stinking, sweet as honey, sweat inducing, symphonic, Trump can’t handle this coffee, vengeful, Wagnerian, wicked, with nutmeg and cinnamon swirls, with a hint of stevia, with a hint of vanilla, with a hint of ***, with a hint of whisky, with a hint of cherry, with a hint of fruit overtones, with a hint of drugs spicing up the coffee, spendific, speeding, splendid, superior accept no substitutes, survived the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, the Afghan war, the first and Second Korean war, World War 11, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on black people, the ****** revolution,

Soulful as a summer’s night in MOTOWN- James Brown approved, TOP approved, Berkeley approved, the coffee that Jimmy Hendrix drank before he died, the coffee that Elvis drank on his last breakfast, the coffee that Barry White crooned as he drank his cup of coffee – and the coffee that made the white boy play stand up and play that funky music, the coffee that made Jonny B Goode play his guitar, and made Jonny bet the devil his soul after he drank his morning cup of righteous coffee and the coffee that make the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll, the coffee your mother warned you against drinking, the coffee that Napoleon drank when he became the Emperor of all Europe, the Coffee that Beethoven drank when he wrote the Ninth symphony, the coffee that Mozart drank as he wrote his last symphony, the coffee that Lincoln drank before he was killed, the Hemingway drank before he killed himself, the coffee that started the 60’s, and ended the 20th century,

the coffee that Lenin drank as he plotted revolution, the coffee that ****** and Stalin drank with FDR as they divided up the world after World War 11, the cup that JFK drank before he was blown away, the coffee Jerry drinks while driving in cars with random celebrities and political figures, the coffee that Jon Stewart drinks before he goes on an epic take down of some foolish politico, the cup of Arabic coffee that Sadaam drank the day he was executed, the coffee that GW and Cheney drank when they bombed Baghdad, the Indian cup of coffee that Bid Laden drank before 9-11 and just before the seals blew his *** to hell, the cup of coffee that Tiger Woods drank with his mistresses while playing a 3, 000 dollar round of golf at Sandy Lane golf course in Barbados, the last legal drug that does what drugs should do, the cup of coffee that Obama drank when he became President, Vietnamese, Vienna brew, wacky, whimsical,

Whisky Tango Foxtrot, wild, weird, wonderful, WOW, Yabba dabba doo! Yada Yada yada Zappa’s favorite cup of cosmic coffee, and Zorro’s last cup of coffee, Good to the last drop rolled into one simple cup of hot coffee   
As I pound down that first cup of coffee
And fire up my synaptic nerve endings with endless supplies
Of caffeine induced neuron enhancing chemicals

I face the dawning day with trepidation and mind-numbing fear
I turn on the TV and watch the smarmy newscasters in their perfect hair

Lying through their perfect blazing white teeth
about the great success the government is having
Following the great leader's latest pronouncements

I want to scream
and shoot the TV
and run out side

Shouting
Stop the world!
I want to get
off this ******* crazy planet"

The earth does not care a whit
about my attitude problem

It merely shrugs
and moves around the Sun
In its appointed daily run

the universe whispers
in my ear
time to drink more coffee
for an attitude adjustment

And I sit down
The madness dissipating a bit
And enjoy my second cup
Of heaven and hell
In my morning cup of Joe

Coffee Revolutions



coffee cup
Coffee led to the American Revolution<span
As patriots drank coffee
To rebel against
the aristocratic English tea

Coffee started the London Stock Market
And started the gossip mills running
Every great invention
Was fed by coffee's sweet brew
sweet allure

All the great thinkers
All the great leaders
All were enslaved
to coffee's magic

I sing my praises
Of the great
glorious coffee lady

Long may she continue
To be my sweet companion

Long may coffee continue
To rule my heart
And set my heart
on fire

Ode to Coffee



Mistress of sacred love
Sacred lady of desire

You start my day
Setting my heart on fire
With your dark delicious brew 

And throughout the day
Whenever the mean old blues come by
You chase them away

With your bittersweet ambrosial brew
Every time I inhale your witch's brew

I am filled with power, light and love
And everything is al right Jack
If only for a few fleeting minutes

I love you oh coffee goddess
In all your magical forms

In the dark coffee of the dawning day
In the sizzling coffee in the mid morning break
In the afternoon siesta break
And in the post dinner desert drink

I love you my coffee mistress
You are my refuge
From this horrid world

And you are my secret lover
Never disappoint me, ever
I've never had a bad cup
Of that I can be sure

Even the dismal coffee
Served at Denny's at 3 am
Is still sweet loving coffee

Even the farmer brother's diner coffee
Excites me and gets me going
Asking for another cup of divine delight

Coffee always is there
It is always on and piping hot
With hidden dark secrets
Swirling in its liquid essence

Coffee is my last vice
My only legal vice left

Coffee does not cheat on me
It is always faithful, always true
It does not turn on its friends

And all it asks in return
Is that you come back
Cup after cup after cup

A good cup of coffee
Is a little bit of heaven
In a cup of dark liquid hell

Coffee is like a drug
But a good drug that does what is should
And never complains

It does not get grouchy
It does not hurt you

It does not make you crazy
But allows the muse to come out
And play with it

Coffee led to the American Revolution
As patriots drank coffee
To rebel against the aristocratic English tea

Coffee started the London Stock market
And started the gossips mills running

Every great invention
Was fed by coffee's sweet brew
sweet allure

All the great thinkers
All the great leaders
All were enslaved to coffee's magic

Yeah
I sing my praises
Of the great glorious coffee lady

Long may she continue
To be my sweat companion

Long may coffee continue
To rule my heart
And set my heart on fire

I love thee
Mistress coffee
And sometimes I think
You love me too

No More Coffee Blues








I love coffee
Always have

And coffee has loved me back
But lately I have soured on her
Soured on the whole coffee scene

On the harshness
of the morning brew
And the promises it makes

As I sip of its nectar
Drawn into its lair

Drinking drop by drop
As the caffeine takes over

Rewriting my every nerve
Turning me into a slave
For its perverted pleasure

Yes I love coffee
But I am afraid

Coffee is a harsh mistress
Demanding so much of me

Promising the sun
And delivering the moon

As I drink her swill
Deepening under her influence

I have the coffee blues
Can’t live without her
Can’t live with her

I try
But tea does not cut it
Not really

***** does not do it
At least not in the morning

Yoga is not enough of a buzz
Nor is the runner’s high

And I am afraid deadly afraid of *******
And speed and drugs and energy drinks

And so I remain a slave to coffee
My only legal drug

As I sip another
and fall under
her seductive spread

Once more failing my resolve
To skip coffee for that day
That morning that moment

I shall never be free of her spell
Ever and she knows it
As she beckons me
Every morning with her intoxicating smell

And I come to her
and drink her brew

And become her slave
again and again

Coffee Ya Du





must drink coffee
have every day
the morning dawns
drinking my coffee as I yawn

Morning cup of coffee 



every morning
I drink my coffee
as I contemplate 
the dawning day

watching the news anchors
blather on and on
drinking my coffee
thinking of life

and my coffee
consumes me
overwhelms me
and at time controls me

after all coffee is a drug
and I am her slave
from time to time

Drinking Coffee in the Morning



in the morning
dangerous mood
felling deranged
watching the news

trigger warning
you are ******* dude
end of the world
the end times come

I drink coffee
in the morning



Coffee *** Killed





His wife has banned my use
by my owner
says he makes too much
of a mess when he uses me

it is not his fault
I want to say
but being a coffee ***
can not speak

and so I am abandoned
thrown out into the trash

and feel very sad
for my owner

who was my friend
he liked me

he keep me going
and I did my job

providing him
with fresh coffee

doing my coffee *** duty
and now it is over

Drinking My Coffee


drinking coffee

drinking my coffee
early in the cool morning
thinking life is fine

everything will be okay
after I drink my coffee

morning coffee



morning coffee

dawning sun 











coffee MGur Poem


coffee

I pray to the coffee gods
every cup of coffee
is like a sacrament to me

I pray as I drink my coffee
that it will fill me
with wisdom

and find peace
with my coffee

as I drink
my devotion

Hot coffee


cup of coffee


take coffee with you
Hot hot coffee, makes my day -

Must drink My daily coffee, as the morning dawns - 

With out my morning coffee

in me,  I feel nothing at all -

Electrified Hot Coffee



coffee is the drug of choice
nothing else will do it
as I drink coffee
Electrified
Hot Coffee

Hot Coffee and Cake


coffee
coffee is the drug of choice
electrified circuits
as I drink coffee
coffee and cake



Coffee Patina



coffee
hot coffee
hot Hellish Heaven
Essence of coffee