i bring my notebook
into the coffee shop
writing down my
thoughts for the day

sipping on a frappe
i let my pen lead the way
writing and writing
about anything and everything

sitting in a coffee shop
with various voices
alternative music
all around me

meeting new people
focusing on my thoughts
letting the coffee fill my veins

We Carry Depression,
Depression Carries us,

A Daily Battle is almost always Fought,
For some, almost always lost.

The trick, if there is one, almost always is,
To Keep battling minute to minute.

One moment you may walk through
A door, feeling lower than low.
But the next thing you know...

A sudden change so small you wouldn't notice, renders your woes mute.

All you have to do is hang in there,
Fight Minute to Minute.

Drinking a cup of Starbucks Helps Too.

You know, this journal does not even contain half of what we know.  I hope we never forget.  


(sonnet #MMMMMMDCLV)


Now, while cicadas drone 'neath blue skies' pale
Glance, or to deeper shades of that, what hence?
Remember Starbucks' "Friends Day" for intents,
The prompt last night, as yesterday's detail:
We rode the bike path 'gain whose wildflowrs hail
As wont in clover's pink, and yellows thence
With brown eyes, thistles' purple, grasses dense
On either side, while goldfinch laughed t'avail.
I'd hated these auld trails we knew, as poor
Since Mum's death, but now I belong to you,
Oh! all's sae sweet like ne'er before as twere.
My car'mel fru-fru drink was tasty too:
Cuz I am yours.  That means I can't write fer
All that cuz evry minute's yours who woo.

08Aug17

Life is not a garden of fragrant flowers,
Life is a chef's kitchen;
Some things get burnt,
Some are frozen,
In the end, it all tastes well.

Life is not a cycle ride down a smooth road,
Life is a bumpy journey uphill;
There are sharp, blind turns
Plus an upward *****,
But the view is magnificent.

Life is not a perfect picture captured by a DSLR,
Life is a photograph shot with a 1.3 megapixel camera;
With no editing allowed,
The sky looks blurred through it,
When actually it is clear.  

Life is not a cup of Starbucks coffee,
Life is a glass of Coke;
It is cold,
Addictive at times,
Mostly, fizzy and sparkling.

Life is not-
Seeing the glass half full.
Just appreciating as is;
*Simply, beautiful.

Working front register at Starbucks
you ask a little boy in green
if he likes Minecraft
What the coolest thing
he ever built was
then watch
As his family
and the whole line behind them
gasp, fall silent
stare at you
with standing ovation eyes
as he lights right up
to tell you all about it

A Grande Iced coffee sweetened with whole milk always
supplied Trey, the Zombie, with energy. On a bright yellow morning
Trey sat down on a canvass deck chair outside of Starbucks.
He puffed on his e-cigarette. Then he took a sip from his plastic cup.
And as he tasted the refreshing creamy coffee, he remembered
what it was like to be a human being. Before the infection decimated
the world’s population of men, women, and children, everybody
was killing each other with double barreled shotguns, sleeping
with their best friend’s girlfriend to prove that they were not
in love with their best friend, forcing girls and women of all
ages into cramped basements leaving them with a bowl of
white rice and a cup of water, telling them that they had to sleep
with strange men who lived in America and other countries polluted
with lust and desire, or else they would get sent to the bottom
of a swamp where the Alligators roamed the muddy shores in
search of flesh. Trey remembered that he had been a college student
living at home, working as a tennis instructor part time at the
rec center down the street from where he resided at.
This little girl Amy bit him on the ankle. It was the first time
he had taught her how to hit a topspin serve with such
velocity that the tennis ball would bounce off the service box
and rise over the chain-linked fence, where the zombies were, crawling
over and up onto the hard courts. As Trey drank his iced coffee
he realized that life was more pleasant now. People didn’t shoot each
other anymore. Closeted gays and lesbians didn’t sleep with their best friend’s boyfriends and girlfriends just to prove that they were heterosexuals. And wicked men with shaggy hair and yellow teeth didn’t buy young girls and women from cramped basements and **** them because they had the money and the motivation to follow their lustful desires. No. None of this happened anymore. Now that the Zombies had taken over. Everybody just went to Starbucks, and drank iced coffees sweetened with milk.

Sitting in Starbucks
drinking sweet coffee from Christmas red cap.
Not many people inside. Table for two, me and I,
music in background, quite nice,
at least I don't mind, but who does mind
anything,
when festive time has just arrived?

Enjoy your coffee, my friend,
but in the meantime, have a look outside
the window,
at rough sleepers and their hands,
open and empty.
This year
Christmas came early again.

I'm waiting in the Starbucks line-
Homework due in an hour.
I realize my clothes don't match.
I also realize this is a lot like
what love feels like.
A letdown.
A constant urgency.
Insecurity that a deadline will not be made.
Making small stupid decisions based on your addictions.
Then the coffee I sip tastes like ****
all because the line to get it was super long-
too much ice and not enough coffee.
I drink it too fast and it makes me sick-
I'm thinking it was because of the pills
not so much the coffee this time.
And I continue to think about love.
How I never want to take that many pills again.
How I never want to play tic tac toe
with every negative emotion I have
I don't think I ever want to find love again.
Because this type of destruction should not happen more than once-
but to me, it's happened more than that.
Even the worst things in history are often repeated.
That's what being in love with you feels like-
A used history book too worn and used
to even show any inherent value-
But you love history and what it has to offer.
So you tape back the broken spine
in hopes of salvaging what you love so much.
But it's never enough to make it readable
it's never enough to use for notes later on
or to read your favorite chapter
and all you can think about is how wonderful it once was.
When you were pulling back each page
so filled with joy about what the next had to offer.
You had a lot to offer-
but all you saw was your broken spine
and torn apart pages.
I wrote my name inside the front cover
etched in pen so everyone would know it was mine-
but I guess my name faded and now it's all just smeared ink
you can't even spell out what it says anymore
maybe because I lost myself inside of you.
I'm again looking at how my clothes don't match
and how much time I took to put this outfit on
but the lighting in my room is dim
and when the actual sunlight shows more things
than the darkness of faded counterfeit wattage
you start to see the things you're missing-
like yourself.
You would like to send someone out to find you
maybe your parents or your friends
but they're all too busy in their own lives
so you look for yourself-
by yourself
and you wonder how you got this way.
How two nights ago you happen to be the same person
you were six years ago-
even the worst things in history are often repeated.
I'm starting to think taking this medicine
wasn't such a good idea.
But the only reason I did it in the first place
was because of how crazy I felt with you.
I didn't want to be crazy anymore-
I wanted love to work for once.
I guess you can't teach yourself something you've never seen
like how I taught myself to swim by watching my brother
and I taught myself how to tie my shoes watching spongebob.
No one ever showed me love-
no one ever put on that play for my young eyes to see
so now I'm searching and searching for something
when I don't even know what the **** I'm looking for.
I think I would rather look for myself instead-
I'm sure I never want to look for love again
but what happens when I try to love myself?
How can you achieve something so foreign?
God could be a fat, black, lesbian jew
and how would we know, we've never actually seen God..
That's kind of how I feel about love.
It could be a giant hurricane destroying everything
because that's the only love I've ever known.
I can read about it until my eyes are heavy-
I can watch it in movies until makeup is stained on my cheeks
but none of it ever means anything to me
in a world where I never mean anything to you.
Love is kind of like starbucks-
it's convenient because it's everywhere
and everyone is waiting in line to get a taste
most of the time it's not what you expected
and it's usually just bitter-
but sometimes you get lucky
and everything is sweet-
the way you wanted it to be
until it's empty.
I am empty.