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Amanda Stoddard Aug 2015
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.
you were never really fond of coffee.
Sombro Dec 2014
I work in a coffee shop
For little more than sight
The sight of those who enter
At midday

Those that don't work
Their faces lined like
Maps fully filled
They come in to talk

Those that can't work
The sight of the infant in
The man who is led within
They come in to be somewhere

And those who do work
Their lines only filled a little
But I know they will be unchanging
They come in to earn a pittance

And me
I can leave
I am so unexplored, but
It's easy to imagine life ending here

In the coffee shop
R Saba Oct 2012
and now here i am
writing poetry about you
in tim hortons
i've sunk this low
may as well keep going
extend the metaphor
except
we are not symbolic
we are real
or at least my mind thinks we were
and i'm usually right
so
who are you to say i'm wrong?
except you didn't
you just didn't say anything
and that's what makes me think
i should be somewhere else
somewhere other than this table
growing green with moss and envy
bending over time and time again
to pick up that lucky penny
polishing it off and adding it to my pocket
saving up for another drink
so i can buy more time
waiting around
for another chance encounter with you
that i know won't amount to anything
but hey
i can try can't i?
i have that right and i use it
abuse it
and all for what?
here i am sitting at a table for two
and you?
you're somewhere else
like you've always been
never there in front of me
except when passing me by
giving me the eye
or
did i just imagine it?
i think i know what i'm talking about
but my predictions all put me in the same place
sitting here with a cup in front of me
slowly emptying
but never all the way
because i still say i've got time to wait
my watch is wrong
some excuse
to go along with my own stupid games
playing the lottery and losing
but each small compensation lifts me up
i'm so hopeful one day it's gonna **** me
and i'll die here
in tim hortons
with my cold coffee sitting in front of me
saying
i told you so
you should've finished me when you had the time!
and i'll know
i should've finished us when i had the time
maybe then we never would have been like this
skirting around each other
all awkward smiles
cold coffee
warmed up
is never the same as when it's fresh
tim hortons by the way is a Canadian coffee chain with cheap doughnuts, great place to waste your life writing poetry about people who couldn't care less
There was poison in the coffee
and i was too shy to tell
there was poison in the coffee
was it my fault?
i can't quite
can't quite recall
suddenly spouting lies
like a whistle
high and shrill
pointing fingers
is that what this poison does to us
first thing awake
it's just the falsehoods of porcelain dolls
and i sure hope that it was
poison
and not just who we are

i was so true last night
my lips formed perfect words
and i was harsh and charming
i meant every thing i said
since the morning i am a liar
and i do not wish to be
but look!
it spreads like a plague!
is it on the wind?
or in the water
like typhoid
carving up our innards
and turning the devil out
please,
let it be the coffee
that much we can cure
PN Parent Aug 2014
His fingers wrap tightly around his cup,
shaking, tingling, raising it to his lips often,
the white frothy coffee drink steaming
while his tongue ignores the intense heat.

She plays with straw and the cardboard cup,
letting the heat of the black coffee
ease the tension between her fingertips
and seep down to each of her toes.

She smiled at him, observing each detail
that she loved about his appearance.
He sincerely laughed at every word she said,
looking deeply into her ocean eyes at every chance.

His white drink remained in his cup
as he carefully took sips to relax his nervouseness,
but she slopped her dark grinds, spilling them
over the edge and permanently staining the white.

The cups, at first sight, seemed to describe their personalities.
And yet, at a deeper second look, described their demeanor.

On the outer appearance, he was put together and cautious,
with a plan for his entire future,
while she was messy and without a care for what's next,
oblivious to her own wreckage.

But on the insides, both were bitter-sweet coffees,
happy to finally see eachother after so long,
but nervous because of their unresolved last encounter.
He was pure, curious white. She was dark, mysterious black.
Totally opposite and yet perfectly compatible.

Neither admitted one missed the other,
yet they promised to meet every summer and winter forever.
Captured in the psych ward part 7




You see the HDU was in turmoil , you see with Pete constantly walking around claiming He
Was the messiah, and patty Ros saying he was the first president of the united states and
The mere fact he kept on saying that,'made Pete think, patty was crazy,,and big Anne was
Really stressed, mainly because this was the day of her tribunal and it could mean that she is free, and brad got out of bed and sent into the TV room and watched the morning news
And Susan got up after being in bed for 15 hours, you see for her things got a bit chaotice
And Pete was still hearing Woosey Woosey Woosey over and over, and Ron got up out of bed, and went into coffee palace to have a cup of coffee and started to talk to the workers there, you see the server is named Fran and the waitress is named Dan, and Ron loved to talk About what kind of things he did last night.like waking up with Godzilla looking at him,
But the main reason why he goes there, cause his job is stressing enough, and he can't cope with all the aspects of his job without his morning coffee, and Fran said, ok how was your night last night, and Ron said, well, I was a bit ****** on friday night, and I was called into
Work, which I wasn't expected, and Fran said what happened, and Ron said, well it turns out that Martin Kelly was under suicide watch as well as Pete was giving the staff a hard
Time, you see that man lived in the same area than me, I was in the area, when he was taken into custody, and I had no idea he was going to be put in the HDU, and what I hate, that Robert is 14, and he is in with these crazy people, no I think it's weird, and one man says
He is George Washington, and wanted to meet Obama,  and needs medication to calm him
Down, I have no idea, whether he really believes that or not, and frankly I don't care, and
After finishing his coffee,,he said thanks and tipped the staff and then went to the hospital
And clocked in and went into the HDU, and the nurses were saying, that, where have you been, you see, we need to get Martin ready for his hearing, and Anne can't wait for hers,
And Ron said, how is Martin going, and the nurses said, well , he still is banging on the wall
And last night the nurse tried to calm him down with ******, he snapped at her and threw a
Series of threats her way,,so, she said eventually **** it,,I am getting out of here, and Ron said, that nurse, is she still here, and the nurse said, no she is home, why did she do the wrong thing by running out,,and Ron said, yeah, you see, night time is the worst time, to
Be in a place, like this, and if she can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen, and then Ron
Said, you see, if she can 't handle it, I think she should have her job in the HDU at night reviewed, cause Martin Kelly needs to be settled down,,and it is putting patients and nurses and him in danger, so just think about it, ok, now then Ron went into the HDU to
Do his rounds and he saw Anne, and she said, am I still getting out today, I have been
Ringing my family, and they are looking forward to it, and Ron said, how about we give
You a brain scan, to see if there is any sign that your brain is malfunctioning, like patty
Who happened to be walking around at present saying George washington's initial speech
And he drove the nurses crazy, and mind you he drove Ron crazy too, and after finishing
Talking to Anne, he went into the common room to talk to Robert and brad and brad said, I hear that Anne could be let go, why don't you let me out too, and Ron said back to him, well
I will see what I can do,,but I need to see positive results that your medication is working for you and Robert, said to Ron, how about my release, you see I have been here too long, I am
Only 14, I want to get out, and besides which Pete is another phedo, who wants to *** me up, and Ron said, well, I will see what I can do, but I might just do what I did for Jamie, and
Bring you to the IVU, but at the moment I ain't sure if there a bed available, but I will do my best, and robert said, well sometimes your best isn't ****** good enough, you see, I am stuck here, and, if I had a gun, I will aim fire at this entire psych ward, and I will **** you first, Ron, and Robert meant that from the bottom of his heart and after he left there, he went into Pete's room and said how are you, and Pete said, why do you care so much, I shot you
That night, and it took you away from work for so long, and then suddenly there was a very loud noise, of someone screaming and Ron went out of Pete's room and they brought in this 17 year old girl named Naomi Jensen and she was brought in for attempting to drown her little brother at st Kilda beach, and she has been diagnosed with schitzophrenia and
Also there could be a hint of bipolar there as well, and Ron tried to settle her down , by
Giving her ****** and Naomi said, I am not a ****** so you get that drug away from me, ya
Stupid fucken ****, and Ron thought this girl needed help, and dedicated the next 3 hours for her, cause she was young, and needs to be heard, mainly because, Ron knows nothing
About her parents, and they talked about everything, and then when it came to the topic of parents, Naomi went crazy, and said, I have no parents, well none that actually care for me
Anyway, and Ron kept on talking to her, untill Naomi told Ron to F off, and Ron went to organise Anne's tribunal to see whether or not she gets out or not, and Ron told the nurses
To keep an eye on Naomi, she could be a danger to herself here, and went to his desk to
Get the paper work necessary to help Anne and at 11-20, Ron asked Anne to come with him and for Anne this was becoming exciting cause she could be coming out of hospital for
The first time in 2 years, you see she has been good for a while, and Ron read out his report, to hopefully make it good for Anne and then the nurse who knows her at night said
Anne really, is learning about, how to keep quiet. At night, she has not been in any fight for
3 days now, and I personally think she is ready for society, and the psychiatrist asked her
Now, are you still wanting to hurt someone, if they **** you off, and Anne said, well, no,
I would prefer to understand why they did this to begin with and the psychiatrist released
Anne,,and said, I am putting you on a two year of good behaviour, cause, you still show your temper, but you are a person, you need to be given a go, you see, after Ron left
Anne's hearing , he told Anne to go back to her room, to pack her things, and when she went into her room, Naomi was reading her journal, and Anne said, get the **** away from my stuff
You stupid teenager, ok, you might be moving in here, but ******* ya ****, ok, and in 20
Minutes Anne was packed, and then said goodbye having lunch together, and the nurses got all the patients and staff to sign a card, to wish Anne on her way, you see, Anne was feeling happy about being given a card from everyone here, and then after lunch Ron took Anne out of the HDU, to the front doors of the hospital, and said, have a nice day, and Anne went over to catch a tram, to her old friends house, and Ron, bought Martin Kelly to the tribunal, for him to hear of whether he goes to IVU or stays in HDU, but with the way
He behaves at night, he could be taken to a maximum security prison, but there is no way
Martin Kelly is getting released, cause he isn't ready for society yet, and Ron went to his desk and got Martin's file and grabbed Martin and took Martin to his tribunal, and first
Of all the nurses tell the tribunal of his outbursts at night and everyone being sick of him
Making noise at night and Ron said, that, he thinks, maybe Martin needs to go to a maximum security prison, the night staff, can't deal with too many more nights of this,
And the 2 psychiatrists said ok, well, for the safety of the other patients, I think prison is
The best option for you, and Martin said, I am too mentally ill for those people in there, please leave me in here, and Ron said, no, I think you need to stay in prison for a whole
And the psychiatrist said, we will give you a proper hearing in 2 months, but you will spend
The time you have till then, in the maximum security prison, and I think that is better for the
Other patients as well as for the staff and yourself, and then Ron, asked the rest of the
People how are their days, and Robert said, thar be is so fucken *******, you see you look after that phedaphile, and you treat us like **** and Ron said, for your information,
We are moving him to prison to keep you all protected here in prison and then Robert sat there watching TV and Naomi came out to watch TV and said, she wants the **** out of there, and Robert said, nobody wants to stay here, but we all have our reasons for being here, and Naomi said, my boyfriend was bashed by another person in a nite club and I picked up a dinner knife and stabbed that man, but I did that, cause if you mess with my boyfriend I will mess with you, dude, and Ron, who has had a tough day on the job, clocked off and went into the cafe, to grab some food, and he said. And Fran said how was your day and Ron said, one kid who is totally angry with the staff cause he is too young for this place and I released a person who gets violent, and I just know I will see her again, but I have to keep it positive for her and Martin Kelly was taken to a maximum security prison
Today, he is so unhappy with me but in hindsight I think it's for the besom and then there is this nightclub riot, where, this girl stabbed a man for fighting her boyfriend, mind you, she
Has had a lot to deal with, and then Fran said what do you want, and suddenly the phone rings, and when Fran answered it, and it was the maximum security prison saying that
Martin Kelly, was found hung in his cell, he is now on the way to hospital, but it's touch and go, and Ron said, he will be there straight away, and when he got there, the nurses said, t butthey tried their best, but Martin Kelly is dead, and now they have to find the next of kin and Ron said, that he will do it, and went into his office and looked in Martin Kelly's chart for the closest next of kin, and in Ballarat, was the closest, his mother who was in a nursing home, well yeah she needs to know, and decided to call his daughter, but that opened up a can of worms, you see Martin Kelly ***** his kids out of him, so maybe mum in Ballarat
Is the best option and Ron rang the nursing home, and spoke to Ruth Kelly, but she was so out of it, he decided to look after the body himself, so he arranged to put him in the morgue
And tried to call his brothers and sisters, and he made these calls at home, after passing by the cafe with a coffee and a cake, with a bit of red rooster, and it was hard to find anyone
Who liked Martin Kelly, and there was a party around his house and everyone was making a lot of noise, and Ron shut his window, and eventually found his sister in London, and decided to ring her up and told her that her brother Martin was dead, she hung up, and rang
Back in 5 minutes, that she will on the next plane, to arrange to bring the body here to England, and Ron went to bed, and felt ****** good, about getting in contact with the sister, the next day will be tough, everyone will say, good riddens to the ugly mug, but that is part of Ron's job


Sent from my iPad
Elida Merseli Dec 2024
As you exhale the smoke of your cigaret whiles I drink my coffee, the rush of the caffein in my blood gives me the shakes and your seductive presence makes the palms of my hands sweat ?

You take a sip of your black coffee whiles I inhale you every time you look at me with those deep dark eyes that ignite flames in my chest and set me on fire ?

I exhale the smoke that leaves me slightly light headed whiles your lips touch the coffee cup and I am jealous   of anything that touches your lips for I have not kissed those bitter sweet lips of yours ' yet '!

I take a sip of my coffee whiles you inhale every bit of me . Hot blood rushes  though our veins carrying sweet  poison of coffee and cigarets together with  bitter potent souls of our confused being !

White smoke of poison we once inhaled  together which tasted sweeter than honey has now left nothing more than just a bitter taste in our mouth and grey mist as a memory of us ...

e.m
Newcastle
bc moon raven Aug 2010
he talks too much in the morning
not even over coffee
not even over my listening ears
barrage of questions
thundering past my consciousness
i simply do not hear.

my mind is else where.
in someone elses coffee
in anothers ears
banging of hearts
clasping hands parting like waves
i simply do not live there.

taking for granite the days
was it really just seven months
how did we let this happen
i stir my coffee
drawing pictures of memories in the foam
i simply stare at the wall.

oh, i hear him again
what do you think of this
when do you think you will
i look up and smile
hiding my face
i simply do not live here.
Raj Arumugam Jan 2014
1
if and when I'm retired

I'd expect the world to be kind
and reverential:
so I'd expect when I drive

all people get off the road 

when they see me approach;

and at the bank 
for all to step aside

for a man whose daily 3-time meals

is nothing but baked beans


2
I'd expect the world to be in awe, and to admire
so the women would say: *
”My, look at this retiree
in his psychedelic shirt and rainbow hat
and his bell-bottoms – real cool, baby”
and the men would concur, dazzled:
“Owww - this guy, what planet is he from?”


3
and 
of course I'd expect
 the govt
to send me my cheque
 weekly –
no, wait - EFT
will be the way to go;

and the Minister for the Retired
should call me every 30th

to ask if I’d like a raise

4
Also I’d expect
to wake up each morning
to find a cup of coffee ready on my table
and I’d turn to my wife and say:
“All our lives, you always put the ****** salt
in the coffee”
And I’d expect her to say
(cos that’s always been the way):
“If you want sugar in your coffee
fix your ****** coffee yourself!”*

5
And  all these things I expect
of the world (except of my wife)
to be kind 
and reverential
if and when I’m retired -
but then again, I might just die
at my table at work
after a coffee I fixed myself
a bit of dark humour....or as Polonius says in Hamlet:  "...comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,  historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical- comical-historical-pastoral..."
Jess Ram May 2014
I never used to drink black coffee,
my body had craved the sugar, begged for the sweetness  
but after all of our afternoons in that coffee shop,
after all the nights where I drank nothing but you,
I found myself more and more okay with the taste,
I found myself needing less and less sweetness to satisfy my tongue.

It was only after you left did I realize I had come to enjoy black coffee,
I had grown accustomed to the bitterness and dreaded the sweetness.

It was only after you left did I realize you had taken all the sweetness with you.
Matthew M Jun 2017
The greatest Coffee I ever had,
Was slurped down quicker than beer at a party,
But the best Barista was nothing of the sort,
He couldn't understand my language, nor even my gestures,
I had pointed a shivering finger at the smudged white chalk that once said 'Mocha',
But perhaps he knew what I needed,

While I waited icy chill nibbled at my ears and darkness deepened before the dawn,
My nose burnt cold, steaming red and dribbling snot like an oil-leak,
My hands wandered for warmth, searching pockets, armpits, sleeves,
Heavy socks and heavier boots shuffled, scuffing square-cut stones,

Finally, with a hurried grunt and a waving hand, I got my mistake,
I fled away from the waiting crowd,
With my coffee into the quiet of the mountain,

The bobbling beanies, fluttering scarfs and clicking cameras faded away,
Leaving solitude, me and my coffee,
Up so high, my ears brushed the roof of the sky,

It was an elixir of warmth and wakefulness,
Served in a grey tin-cup,
Scratched white with age and use,
Full of faith and function,

My tight fingers clenched coldly to the second-hand heat,
Radiating from the metal mug and the lava in a cup,
Steam filled my lungs and the sweet smells rose bitter,
Like a dream of waking up,
Unsettling my huddled thoughts and grabbing the bottom of my spine,
In a heady vice,

Around the world fell away, grey stone to greenery, far below,
And then up again, black, holy and alive,
Ended in a snow scar ridge silhouetted against the waking sun,

I watched,
As the pitch colours, of both the charcoal coffee and the heavy sky,
Blended into lighter tones,
Burnt summer brown and an aubergine orange, glowing in sunlight,

With each sip, both the day and I awoke,
Rising, ascending, resurrecting,
Golden glow breaking the black,
While the black potion spelled a golden warmth,

The taste is melted snow now, gone beneath rays of sunshine,
But the burning heat of the liquid of life and light,
Remains, filling heart, teeth, tendons and hands,
Until long after dawn is done.
Please critique and advise on improvements. It's for an English paper.
Kennedy Taylor Dec 2014
Her brown coffee eyes woke up my soul
more than any amount of caffeine could.
Her smile warmed my heart like the sun
when you walk out of the shade on a spring day.
Her mind seemed to make mine whole
even all the parts that never made sense to me.
And I still wonder why I am the one
who gets to look into her brown coffee eyes.
A PLAY


BY



ALEXANDER   K   OPICHO









THE CASTE
1. Chenje – Old man, father of Namugugu
2. Namugugu – Son of Chenje
3. Nanyuli – daughter of Lusaaka
4. Lusaaka – Old man, father of Nanyuli
5. Kulecho – wife of Lusaaka
6. Kuloba – wife of Chenje
7. Paulina – Old woman, neighbour to Chenje.
8. Child I, II and III – Nanyuli’s children
9. Policeman I, II and III
10. Mourners
11. Wangwe – a widowed village pastor

















ACTING HISTORY
This play was acted two times, on 25th and 26th December 2004 at Bokoli Roman Catholic Church, in Bokoli sub- location of Bungoma County in the western province of Kenya. The persons who acted and their respective roles are as below;

Wenani Kilong –stage director
Alexander k Opicho – Namugugu
Judith Sipapali Mutivoko- Nanyuli
Saul Sampaza Mazika Khayongo- Wangwe
Paul Lenin Maondo- Lusaaka
Peter Wajilontelela-  Chenje
Agnes Injila -  Kulecho
Beverline Kilobi- Paulina
Milka Molola Kitayi- Kuloba
Then mourners, children and police men changed roles often. This play was successfully stage performed and stunned the community audience to the helm.













PLOT
Language use in this play is not based on Standard English grammar, but is flexed to mirror social behaviour and actual life as well as assumptions of the people of Bokoli village in Bungoma district now Bungoma County in Western province of Kenya.

























ACT ONE
Scene One

This scene is set in Bokoli village of Western Kenya. In Chenje’s peasant hut, the mood is sombre. Chenje is busy thrashing lice from his old long trouser Kuloba, sitting on a short stool looking on.

Chenje: (thrashing a louse) these things are stubborn! The lice. You **** all of them today, and then tomorrow they are all-over. I hate them.
Kuloba: (sending out a cloud of smoke through her tobacco laden pipe). Nowadays I am tired. I have left them to do to me whatever they want (coughs) I killed them they were all over in my skirt.
Chenje: (looking straight at Kuloba) Do you know that they are significant?
Kuloba: What do they signify?
Chenje: Death
Kuloba: Now, who will die in this home? I have only one son. Let them stop their menace.
Chenje: I remember in 1968, two months that preceded my father’s death, they were all over. The lice were in every of my piece of clothes. Even the hat, handkerchief. I tell you what not!
Kuloba: (nodding), Yaa! I remember it very well my mzee, I had been married for about two years by then.
Chenje: Was it two years?
Kuloba: (assuringly) yes, (spots a cockroach on the floor goes at it and crushes it with her finger, then coughs with heavy sound) we had stayed together in a marriage for two years. That was when people had began back-biting me that I was barren. We did not have a child. We even also had the jiggers. I can still remember.
Chenje: Exactly (crashes a louse with his finger) we also had jiggers on our feet.
Kuloba: The jiggers are very troublesome. Even more than the lice and weevils.  
Chenje: But, the lice and jiggers, whenever they infest one’s home, they usually signify impending death of a family member.
Kuloba: Let them fail in Christ’s name. Because no one is ripe for death in this home. I have lost my five children. I only have one child. My son Namugugu – death let it fail. My son has to grow and have a family also like children of other people in this village. Let whoever that is practicing evil machinations against my family, my only child fail.
Chenje: (putting on the long-trouser from which he had been crushing lice) let others remain; I will **** them another time.
Kuloba: You will never finish them (giggles)
Chenje: You have reminded me, where is Namugugu today? I have not seen him.
Kuloba: He was here some while ago.
Chenje: (spitting out through an open window) He has become of an age. He is supposed to get married so that he can bear grand children for me. Had I the grand children they could even assist me to **** lice from my clothes. (Enters Namugugu) Come in boy, I want to talk to you.
Kuloba: (jokingly) you better give someone food, or anything to fill the stomach before you engages him in a talk.
Namugugu: (looks, at both Chenje and Kuloba, searchingly then goes for a chair next to him)
Mama! I am very hungry if you talk of feeding me, I really get thrilled (sits at a fold-chair, it breaks sending him down in a sprawl).
Kuloba: (exclaims) wooo! Sorry my son. This chair wants to **** (helps him up)
Namugugu: (waving his bleeding hand as he gets up) it has injured my hand. Too bad!
Chenje: (looking on) Sorry! Dress your finger with a piece of old clothes, to stop that blood oozing out.
Namugugu: (writhing in pain) No it was not a deep cut. It will soon stop bleeding even without a piece of rag.
Kuloba: (to Namugugu) let it be so. (Stands) let me go to my sweet potato field. There are some vivies, I have not harvested, I can get there some roots for our lunch (exits)
Chenje: (to Namugugu) my son even if you have injured your finger, but that will not prevent me from telling you what I am supposed to.
Namugugu: (with attention) yes.
Chenje: (pointing) sit to this other chair, it is safer than that one of yours.
Namugugu: (changing the chair) Thank you.
Chenje: You are now a big person. You are no longer an infant. I want you to come up with your own home. Look for a girl to marry. Don’t wait to grow more than here. The two years you have been in Nairobi, were really wasted. You could have been married, may you would now be having my two grand sons as per today.
Namugugu: Father I don’t refuse. But how can I marry and start up a family in a situation of extreme poverty? Do you want me to start a family with even nothing to eat?
Chenje: My son, you will be safer when you are a married beggar than a wife- less rich-man. No one is more exposed as a man without a wife.
Namugugu: (looking down) father it is true but not realistic.
Chenje: How?
Namugugu: All women tend to flock after a rich man.
Chenje: (laughs) my son, may be you don’t know. Let me tell you. One time you will remember, maybe I will be already dead by then. Look here, all riches flock after married men, all powers of darkness flock after married men and even all poverty flock after married. So, it is just a matter of living your life.
(Curtains)
SCENE TWO

Around Chenje’s hut, Kuloba and Namugugu are inside the hut; Chenje is out under the eaves. He is dropping at them.
Namugugu: Mama! Papa wants to drive wind of sadness permanently into my sail of life. He is always pressurizing me to get married at such a time when I totally have nothing. No food, no house no everything. Mama let me actually ask you; is it possible to get married in such a situation?
Kuloba: (Looking out if there is any one, but did not spot the eaves-dropping Chenje).
Forget. Marriage is not a Whiff of aroma. My son, try marriage in poverty and you will see.
Namugugu: (Emotionally) Now, if Papa knows that I will not have a happy married life, in such a situation, where I don’t have anything to support myself; then why is he singing for my marriage?
Kuloba: (gesticulating) He wants to mess you up the way he messed me up. He married me into his poverty. I have wasted away a whole of my life in his poverty. I regret. You! (Pointing) my son, never make a mistake of neither repeating nor replicating poverty of this home into your future through blind marriage.
Namugugu: (Approvingly) yes Mama, I get you.

Kuloba: (Assertively) moreover, you are the only offspring of my womb             (touching her stomach) I have never eaten anything from you. You have never bought me anything even a headscarf alone. Now, if you start with a wife will I ever benefit anything from you?
Namugugu: (looking agog) indeed Mama.
Kuloba: (commandingly) don’t marry! Women are very many. You can marry at any age, any time or even any place. But it is very good to remember child-price paid by your mother in bringing you up. As a man my son, you have to put it before all other things in your life.
Namugugu: (in an affirmative feat) yes Mama.
Kuloba: It is not easy to bring up a child up to an age when in poverty. As a mother you really suffer. I’ve suffered indeed to bring you up. Your father has never been able to put food on the table. It has been my burden through out. So my son, pleased before you go for women remember that!
Namugugu: Yes Mama, I will.
(Enters Chenje)
Chenje: (to Kuloba) you old wizard headed woman! Why do you want to put    my home to a full stop?
Kuloba: (shy) why? You mean you were not away? (Goes out behaving shyly)

Chenje: (in anger to Namugugu) you must become a man! Why do you give your ears to such toxic conversations? Your mother is wrong. Whatever she has told you today is pure lies. It is her laziness that made her poor. She is very wrong to festoon me in any blame…. I want you to think excellently as a man now. Avoid her tricky influence and get married. I have told you finally and I will never repeat telling you again.

Namugugu: (in a feat of shyness) But Papa, you are just exploding for no good reason, Mama has told me nothing bad……………………
Chenje: (Awfully) shut up! You old ox. Remove your ears from poisonous mouths of old women!
(Enters Nanyuli with an old green paper bag in her hand. Its contents were bulging).
Nanyuli: (knocking) Hodii! Hodii!
Chenje: (calmly) come in my daughter! Come in.
Nanyuli: (entering) thank you.
Chenje: (to Namugugu) give the chair to our visitor.
Namugugu: (shyly, paving Nanyuli to sit) Karibu, have a sit please.
Nanyuli: (swinging girlishly) I will not sit me I am in a hurry.
Chenje: (to Nanyuli) just sit for a little moment my daughter. Kindly sit.
Nanyuli: (sitting, putting a paper-bag on her laps) where is the grandmother who is usually in this house?
Chenje: Who?
Nanyuli: Kuloba, the old grandmother.
Namugugu: She has just briefly gone out.
Chenje: (to Nanyuli) she has gone to the potato field and Cassava field to look for some roots for our lunch.
Nanyuli: Hmm. She will get.
Chenje: Yes, it is also our prayer. Because we’re very hungry.
Nanyuli: I am sure she will get.
Chenje: (to Nanyuli) excuse me my daughter; tell me who your father is?
Nanyuli: (shyly) you mean you don’t know me? And me I know you.
Chenje: Yes I don’t know you. Also my eyes have grown old, unless you remind
me, I may not easily know you.
Nanyuli: I am Lusaaka’s daughter
Chenje: Eh! Which Lusaka? The one with a brown wife? I don’t know… her name is Kulecho?
Nanyuli: Yes
Chenje: That brown old-mother is your mother?
Nanyuli: Yes, she is my mother. I am her first – born.
Chenje: Ooh! This is good (goes forward to greet her) shake my fore-limb my
daughter.

Nanyuli: (shaking Chenje’s hand) Thank you.
Chenje: I don’t know if your father has ever told you. I was circumcised the same year with your grand-gather. In fact we were cut by the same knife. I mean we shared the same circumciser.
Nanyuli: No, he has not yet. You know he is always at school. He never stays at home.
Chenje: That is true. I know him, he teaches at our mission primary school at Bokoli market.
Nanyuli: Yes.
Chenje: What is your name my daughter?
Nanyuli: My name is Loisy Nanyuli Lusaaka.
Chenje: Very good. They are pretty names. Loisy is a Catholic baptismal name, Nanyuli is our Bukusu tribal name meaning wife of an iron-smith and Lusaaka is your father’s name.
Nanyuli: (laughs) But I am not a Catholic. We used to go to Catholic Church upto last year December. But we are now born again, saved children of God. Fellowshipping with the Church of Holy Mountain of Jesus christ. It is at Bokoli market.
Chenje: Good, my daughter, in fact when I will happen to meet with your father, or even your mother the brown lady, I will comment them for having brought you up under the arm of God.
Nanyuli: Thank you; or even you can as well come to our home one day.
Chenje: (laughs) actually, I will come.
Nanyuli: Now, I want to go
Chenje: But you have not stayed for long. Let us talk a little more my daughter.
Nanyuli: No, I will not. I had just brought some tea leaves for Kuloba the old grandmother.
Chenje: Ooh! Who gave you the tea leaves?
Nanyuli: I do hawk tea leaves door to door. I met her last time and she requested me to bring her some. So I want to give them to you (pointing at Namugugu) so that you can give them to her when she comes.
Namugugu: No problem. I will.
Nanyuli: (takes out a tumbler from the paper bag, fills the tumbler twice, pours the tea leaves  into an old piece of  newspaper, folds and gives  it to Namugugu) you will give them to grandmother, Kuloba.
Namugugu: (taking) thank you.
Chenje: My daughter, how much is a tumbler full of tea leaves, I mean when it is full?
Nanyuli: Ten shillings of Kenya
Chenje: My daughter, your price is good. Not like others.
Nanyuli: Thank you.
Namugugu: (To Nanyuli) What about money, she gave you already?
Nanyuli: No, but tell her that any day I may come for it.
Namugugu: Ok, I will not forget to tell her
Nanyuli: I am thankful. Let me go, we shall meet another day.
Chenje: Yes my daughter, pass my regards to your father.
Nanyuli: Yes I will (goes out)
Chenje: (Biting his finger) I wish I was a boy. Such a good woman would never slip through my fingers.
Chenje: But father she is already a tea leaves vendor!
(CURTAINS)


SCENE THREE
Nanyuli and Kulecho in a common room Nanyuli and Kulecho are standing at the table, Nanyuli is often suspecting a blow from Kulecho, counting coins from sale of tea leaves; Lusaaka is sited at couch taking a coffee from a ceramic red kettle.


Kulecho: (to Nanyuli) these monies are not balancing with your stock. It is like you have sold more tea leaves but you have less money. This is only seventy five shillings. When it is supposed to be one hundred and fifty. Because you sold fifteen tumblers you are only left with five tumblers.
Nanyuli: (Fidgeting) this is the whole money I have, everything I collected from sales is here.
Kulecho: (heatedly) be serious, you stupid woman! How can you sell everything and am not seeing any money?
Nanyuli: Mama, this is the whole money I have, I have not taken your money anywhere.
Kulecho: You have not taken the money anywhere! Then where is it? Do you know that I am going to slap you!
Nanyuli: (shaking) forgive me Mama
Kulecho: Then speak the truth before you are forgiven. Where is the money you collected from tea leaves sales?
Nanyuli: (in a feat of shyness) some I bought a short trouser for my child.
Kulecho: (very violent) after whose permission? You old cow, after whose permission (slaps Nanyuli with her whole mighty) Talk out!
Nanyuli: (Sobbingly) forgive me mother, I thought you would understand. That is why I bought a trouser for my son with your money!
Lusaaka: (shouting a cup of coffee in his hand, standing charged) teach her a lesson, slap her again!
Kulecho (slaps, Nanyuli continuously, some times ******* her cheeks, as Nanyuli wails) Give me my money! Give me my money! Give me my money! Give me my money! You lousy, irresponsible Con-woman (clicks)
Lusaaka: Are you tired, kick the *** out of that woman (inveighs a slap towards Nanyuli) I can slap you!
Nanyuli: (kneeling, bowedly, carrying up her hands) forgive me father, I will never repeat that mistake again (sobs)
Lusaaka: An in-corrigible, ****!
Kulecho: (to Nanyuli) You! Useless heap of human flesh. I very much regret to have sired a sell-out of your type. It is very painful for you to be a first offspring of my womb.
I curse my womb because of you. You have ever betrayed me. I took you to school you were never thankful, instead you became pregnant. You were fertilized in the bush by peasant boys.
You have given birth to three childlings, from three different fathers! You do it in my home. What a shame! Your father is a teacher, how have you made him a laughing stock among his colleagues, teachers? I have become sympathetic to you by putting you into business. I have given you tea leaves to sell. A very noble occupation for a wretch like you. You only go out sell tea leaves and put the money in your wolfish stomach. Nanyuli! Why do you always act like this?
Nanyuli: (sobbing) Forgive me mother. Some tea leaves I sold on credit. I will come with the money today?
Kulecho: You sold on credit?
Nanyuli: Yes
Kul
this is a manuscript of a play, please guys help me get any publisher who can do publishing of this play
i  will appreciate. thanks
Miskin Jan 2016
Please,
Black coffee
as my darkness
without sugar
as my life
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
.do you really need a disclaimer, for this sort of work? no, not really... it's not exactly being allowed the equivalency of dropping an in excess of 2000mg of paracetamol.

the one aspect of legacy media, that still has some viability, akin to rekindling the famous extract from the movie: all the presidents men... is concerns for metal health issues of youngsters, who didn't have, the, "privilege" of being exposed to internet ergonomics, other than within the confines of gaming, they came far too late for, what replaced mp3 sharing.... ideas are not exactly sound-bites of copyright infringement...

**** me... do i really have to slap then punch
myself in the face, to remotely stay
awake while drinking ***** like pepsi
sharpshooters?
     i guess so...

   i too, "suffered" from roman bulimia,
the classical kind...
   don't ask me how i managed to make
the esophagus contender of the heart,
muscle...
                 at first it was cheap choc down
the throat, missing on brushing my
teeth for 48 hours...
   then... ******* down the throat,
like the ****-style gimmick of the Watergate
informant...
       came back up, bundled in quasi turds
packages...
               classical Roman bulimia -
eat, regurgitate, eat some more,
hell, now you have a Pompeii style
banquet of the coming of age...
laxatives?
that's no bulimia...
  bulimia is an extension of an ancient
Roman practice, akin to throwing yourself
****-naked into a nettle shrub area...
to get the "itches"...
     that method, involved in energizing
the neuron extension of the skin...
              it's a "placebo" itch...
   nettles, ancient Romans,
and bulimia like the rite of a loss of
virginity of kings...
      festering at its core... of the French court...
with a *****'s teaching apparatus,
leveraging the use of, a single "tool"...
           and even though the ancient Romans
never reached my people...
i get to abuse their phonetic encoding stratum...
bulimia... sure... i, "suffered" from it...
not really, no... i ******* enjoyed
the regurgitation process...
   anti-Grecian pederasty gimmick...
(a) taking a ****
   (b) oral regurgitation
   imitating an ancient Roman banquet
(c) / (d) ensuring the two entry points
are filled by an external source -
wishing for vanilla custard *******...
none to be...
    oops...
               so no one taught these girls
about ancient Roman bulimic
practices?
   you work on the esophagus...
                       by the time i finished
the transition period...
  i automated the esophagus reaction...
like training gymnastics for a six-pack...
no longer ******* down the throat...
you say charge? i think of
a rhino juggernaut...
           so no one bothered these girls
introducing ancient methodologies
to their predicament?
    no training of the esophagus,
no two (index + middle) fingers down
their throat to ease their larynx from
a gagging order?
    none of it?
   they'll grow out of it!
i did...
       drink a liter of ***** per day
and i'm feeling: shimmy!
          upon each nocturnal investment
that i translate into writing...
      anorexia?
    give them excess coffee...
              or strong cider...
      the most pristine aperitif...
    you can't cure anorexia with either
drips or syringes...
   you need aperitifs...
                     but please don't give them
white vinegar...
           you need a balance of alcohol
overcoming the sugars...
     strong beer is alcohol overcoming
starches... won't work...
     coffee and sugar helps...
  both simulate the pristine form of
the marijuana *****...
             it's not poison...
so why should i care?
   oh but i do care... reading this article...
troubled teenagers dodge Instagtram
   curbs on photos glorifying self-harm
...
ever tried burning out a cigarette tip
on your knuckle?
   ever wondered about
    warming up a hand of scissors and
giving yourself an indie tattoo?
   while at the same time...
relying on the mouse principle?
i.e. remaining pipsqueak clean from
making any noise?!
              cutting is so crass...
so unimaginative...
  you will not achieve the adrenaline *****
status of a stab-victim...
   there is no element of surprise...
but...
     if you really want to ingest pain?
hmm... hmm?
            heat up a scissor arm...
   and put it against your skin...
            and then... EAT... the pain...
with what you can surmount in and with,
silence...
                   cutting is too... dramatic...
at least burning yourself you have
not achieved the stature of a shedding blood...
cleaner, more effective,
think of orange recycling bags
collected at the start of the week...

              **** me though...
you seen the comradely behavior
of competing athletes, at the european
championships in Berlin,
   with the pole vaulters?
   Armand Duplantis -
congratulated for having crossed
the 6m benchmark of respectability...
now... that's sport!
football, soccer, basketball,
call it what you like...
   that's not sport, that's business,
that's advertisement...
     that's concussion cover-ups...

Epke Zonderland? also a doctor...
communist Poland believed in
sport, sport on the side,
   sport was never to reach status
of a mono-career investment...
            most of the local football
players from my hometown,
also worked less hours in
the metallurgy plant...
                  that's sport...
   a healthy balance...
which, mainstream sport is lacking...
oh look...
   the women doing the hammer throw,
or the discus...
   not exactly Vogue / Chanel catwalk
material...
    mandible beauties...

    to be honest? the doping affair
in the Olympic sports?
   but a minor setback of credibility...
     i rather watch that...
   than those pitiable 22 ballerinas in soccer.
Faisal Nov 2014
I'll never forget  
That cozy coffee shop
Where u & I had first met....

I remember I had run
Behind ur car
Under that beautiful sun....

Heart was overjoyed
U had lowered the window glass
I saw ur lips smiled...

I had gotten late
Ran to reach the cafe
Meeting u was our fate...

When i saw ur face
I was taken aback
Time had stopped,
U had dazzled in black...

Those eyelashes killed
Once u looked at me 
The place, warmth with filled

I remember v had coffee ordered 
For a long time none of us talked
As none of us had even bothered ...

The silence turned musical
When u had asked, 
"How are u Faisal???"

I remember i had laughed so much
Listening to ur small jokes
"That faujis do such & such...."

It seemed time moved slow
While we talked  & talked
Amidst slowly falling snow.....

I had seen u off & cast a final gaze
Ur car had moved 
Cant forget ur beautiful face....

Wish life was a smooth ride
Wish v had never parted
& u were by my side.....
DuBray Dec 2018
Here I sit

Alone

One waitress

Crying to a Queen song

She serves me coffee

I drink then leave

And on my napkin a coffee stain

What is me?
Rosemarie Caruso May 2013
We approached the counter, side by side.

I said, “Ladies first.”

And, with a trickle of a smile and just a bit of teeth, she said, “I’ll have a café breve.”
The words left her lips in a solid, confident tone, yet they brushed my ears like a whisper.

I must have ordered the same, because that is what I got.

And we sat down in the plush brown chairs and she let her amber hair free from its tight bun.

And we sat. And we spoke.
I spoke of nothingness, I’m sure.

For that is what I remember – nothing.

But she spoke of her dreams, her future plans, her summer plans, her favorite colors and why they were the prettiest.
She spoke of smaller things, like the weather, her chair and why it was so wobbly.
And though it was casual and carefree, I couldn't help but be bewildered by the beauty she bore.

The simple beauty that hides behind closed door and open-mouthed laughs.

And we did this all as we sipped our drinks, gulping down the vague design in the coffee and steamed milk.

And, setting down her mug, I noticed she’d left a smear of crimson on the edge.

And as I stared at the lipstick settled on the rim, I quietly took in the rest of our surroundings –

The frosted windows,
The scent of fresh coffee and pastries,
The lonely barista, who was currently changing the background music CD from electro to smooth jazz.

And as the music began again, so did she.
And the whisper of her voice was like the whisper of the cymbals,
Ringing in time to the beat of the song.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2015
2nd to rise, she enquires
you ready for coffee?

it's only 6:22am

if you're having, I'm having...

she quiet disappears

thinking coffee's coming,
when to this layabout,
it occurs,
she's making
coffee in the ****?

get up, make myself presentable,
track her,
the coffee aroma pulsating,
radar signal emitting

sure enough,
coffee in the ****,
grinding, dripping...percolating

but what I see is
contrast and
definition

appliance white
stainless
steel chrome gleaming,
walnut wood cabinetry warming in
Vermeer sunlight window in-streaming,
a Chagall and Botticelli duet,
freshly filtered
thru a Manhattan sky
and flesh,
freshly filtered

flesh
is not a Crayola color,
or
if it is,
it's more a spectrum,
than a single shade

but this moment morning
flesh is more realized,
as if recognized for the first time,
by a newborn old timer,
who senses the
comprehension tension of circumspection
circumcised differentiation,
flesh knowledge gradation gained

this poem,
a first attempt at
painting a ****
in words

appreciating  task enormity,
for there are currently
insufficient words,
too many striations,
all cannot be straitjacketed to the
vocabulary palette

this then,
but my first definition of many,
of
flesh

so many canvasses,
so many undiscovered shadings
awaiting
****** recognition definition,
composition
July 22, 2015 7:26am
Cat Fiske Aug 2015
6:30 a.m. you wake to see,
a lovely girl.

the type a girl,
who comes with the proper set of manners,

but looks like somewhere,
this girl lost her standards.

7:00 a.m. she wakes and sees you.
when you've never had the decency to point out her beauty,

you're so swell thinking about,
how you can get her for a second round,

never calling her beautiful,
or flawless during the round

you act lousy to her,
even though

you were really hoping to do more than to embrace her,
but you soon forget all this,

as you lie in bed,
at 10 a.m.

sleepy,
like the loath you were,

10:30 a.m. your fast asleep,
while she feels the ever growing solitude,

11:00 a.m. she stands in front of the window,
beams of sun on her like the angel in heaven planned it,

as she sips the coffee she made for the both of you,
11:30 a.m. the coffee is cold, and she contemplates her purpose here,

by 1:00 p.m she is wondering if this relationship,
will ever evolve into something more,

1:30 p.m. she realized he doesn't care about her presents,
and wonders if any man would.

2:00 p.m. she fears no one could ever love her,
she's found herself filling notebooks of flaws that are too great to love,

it is now 2:30 p.m. on the dot, and if someone was to walk in on her,
it would be as if she was omit from the world for years..

a minute passes and he walks in,
pours some coffee,

he drinks, and swallows the cold coffee,
puts the mug down,

he looks at her with disgrace almost,
and walks away,

to who cares where, because at 2:36 p.m.,
she wrote one more flaw,

my coffee was cold and he left me again,
and that was enough to tell her she was worthless.

and he sat in his chair,
not once getting up to say,

or tell her,
how he thought she was beautiful,

flawless,
or the fact he loved her,
communication. complements, and using some words that aren't used too often. I saw a page of words no one used anymore, and flawless and buitiful were the first two, and there were some other interesting words, so I figured why not make it about using theses words, by also making it about two people who didn't communicate, Idk if its a poem or a short story, if someone knows plz tell me.
deanena tierney Aug 2010
In my little coffee shop,
Is where I long to be,
Filled with old and dusty books,
In the hills of Tennessee.

Every morning the same will come,
With a little gossip to share.
And hang out in my lil' coffee shop,
Where time isn't even a care.

I hope there will be some who read,
And some who play some games.
And it won't be very long 'til I,
Know every single one of their names.

And they will feel like family,
The shop will feel like home,
And I will have found where I belong,
With no need more to roam.

In my little coffee shop,
Is where I long to be,
Filled with old and dusty books,
In the hills of Tennessee.
finn Nov 2023
it seems my entire life is defined by drinks.

mother's milk out the womb.

(and maybe those suckles were sweet - it's not like i remember - but her words, for the rest of my life, certainly weren't.)

an hour-long debate, with my best friend at twelve years old - apple or orange juice?

(orange, obviously, is the right answer. we rehash the argument sometimes to this day.)

the day i turn 19, a beer in my hands.

(i'm sat around a campfire with my closest friends, birthdays all older than me - the beer tastes disgusting, as cheap alcohol is, but i'm glad to be there.)

yesterday, i had 1 coffee and 2 mugs of lemon honey tea, 4 glasses of water.

today, no tea, but 2 cups of coffee, a glass of milk, and 3 glasses of water.

i bite at my nails when i'm nervous, swallow down the spit that comes with it, the bile that rises.

last summer, i visited pei, had a raspberry cordial - my favourite drink to date - then bought a case of 4 more to take home with me.

last summer, when i lived in new brunswick, my friends in the same building knew me as the one who would always have a drink in hand - a milk tea, or maybe a pink lemonade, maybe that obscure korean soda i liked.

when i left new brunswick, i took a photo of my 2 trash cans, of the way they were both filled to the brim with empty bottles and cans and jugs.

i still miss the apple cider they made there.

my life is defined by drinks, sips, swallows, taking five minutes to breathe by making myself a nice whipped coffee, trawling the internet for pretty coasters and glassware for an hour in lieu of doing actual work.

Eventually, i close the shopping tabs, take a sip of coffee, and resume with the rest of my life.
i haven't had juice for so long i really need to go out and buy some
Ryan Topez Oct 2013
The reflection that peers back at me,
In my jo-black coffee,
Is taunting and eerie.

With every sip my face ripples and grows old.
The steam that was my youth is no more,
I have grown cold.
Like the remittence of the coffee that once was,
All that is left is grindings and sugar,
Undissolved.

To be drunk, regardless.
Coarse, as it runs down and grazes my throat.
The person who was staring back at me is gone,
And with every coffee that follows,
an unknown reflection, it will host.

Like the empty cup,
I have been rendered useless, by my own nihilistic judgement.
rk Apr 2021
i want to love you
like a lazy sunday morning
staying in bed
taking our time
sipping coffee
memorising every freckle
like the constellations in the sky
white sheets
and tangled limbs
with the scent of a memory
fresh on our lips.
Poetry At Most Oct 2016
Thinking about you and coffee, and the way those two completely separate things are somehow so similar. I'm always needing them first thing in the morning, or the last thing at night. And I think I could drink for days without ever quenching my thirst, so I do. But suddenly I am shaking like a leaf in a storm. I shake, and I smile, and I move across the floor like I know where I'm headed. And then my cup is empty, and I've become like some sort of addict that has finally run dry. I promise myself I'll never drink coffee again.
I fill my mug to the brim the next morning.
Anais Vionet May 2022
The desk was half submerged in a lake of papers.
She felt so adult, being invited for coffee.
But get outta here. With your remarkable eyes and..  WEDDING RING
The question hung invisibly in the air.
What does that mean, coffee?  Have you ever felt like you were missing some obvious sign-signal? Why does he want to have coffee with ME?” Lisa asked herself.
He isn’t the first guy to hit on her but he’s a professor.
WAS he hitting on her?
Her ***-dar said he was hitting on her.
“Sorry, I, I can’t.” she said as her mind searched for context.
She thinks: What if I make him mad - and he decides he doesn’t like me anymore?
Wait, does he like me NOW - or am I just another of a million students he’s taught?
Am I making a thing out of nothing? Am I being fractious?
Maybe coffee means coffee?
She has a hundred thoughts in a millisecond.
“Why not?” he asks, not looking up and marking some student’s paper with a red pin.
“I’m busy with humdrum deadlines,” she said, wondering if that even made sense.
He looks up and chuckles, “No problem.” He says with a smile, then he returns to grading.
After a second she turns and goes.
“I need to find Anais,” she thinks, reaching for her phone.
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Fractious means "troublesome."
Liz Apr 2014
The coffee stain
would not come off
the wall, dear, when i scrubbed
it only the peeling wallpaper
came off in my hand.

It flaked down like
snow onto our rug.
Do you remember, darling,
when we bought that rug,
it was an old place
in Clapham with
threadbare
walls and the old man smoking
a pipe asked if we were together.

We didn't know what to tell him,
babe, but when you asked me
the other day
where I had put the
lost keys I thought of us.
They have been lost
a few years now,

We lost the keys somewhere
incomprehensible
and I cannot get in.

The coffee stain will not
come off the wall, dear.
Not sure about this poem but was trying to convey relationships that have got lost somewhere.
I like my coffee hot,
I like my coffee cold.
I like my coffee fresh.
I like my coffee a day old.
I like my coffee strong.
Black and bitter,
is how I do it.
I love gourmet coffees.
Hell, I'll even drink instant.
Just don't give me
no ****** decaf.
if you want to be
my friend.
Kacie Apr 2014
You’re like that cup of coffee,
At six in the morning,
Before a long day begins.
You keep me going,
For a few hours,
And then at night,
I crash.
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2015
this is a very important poem to me,
about me, and how Obama slurred my people. and never apologized

<•>

there are mornings when I wake up
in my nativity,
in my born/bred,
these struggling to be happy,
United States,
strangely hebrew-speaking,
Jamaican coffee
morning-thinking,
tallying up
what I am,
who I am,
commanded to be,
on this Earth

the labels that the
outward-looking apply,
the tags,
that you have caused
yourself to be defined,
been staked
to your claim,
in infamy and in fame,
that you have
by action and indeed,

have allow
to be presented
as entries on your
global entry passport,
with visas from the
lows and highs,
places where
your have sinned and saved,
all the acts accumulated,
and those,
in pain,
you have been a witness to

word titles that
tinge and suffuse,
summation of my presentation,
sampler of words
like
father, poet,
American,
even,
a for-real
community organizer,
and of course,
bien sûr,
a
Jew

the quality of all these life's papers,
which I grade myself,
I,
the harshest marker
of all

once a young man,
safely away in college,
under the fresh-air freedom of the
university's in loco parentis,
in the early years
spent quantifying oneself

nearly fifty years ago,
now he,
revealed and recalled
when
his college typed-letter,
lately uncovered amidst his,
recently passed mother's papers

"Don't know what kind of
Jew
I will be, but be assured,
that I will be a
Jew
all my life"

so here I am doing my post-sabbath,
top of the week,
right it down,
qualifying myself,
coffee enraged engaged,
a new Sunday tally

taking all my terms,
reordering,
re-prior-itizing,
what was prior, first,
is no longer

decades decay,
events sway,
simple words change me, stain me

nearing on five decades later,
when this
son of speakers,
son of humanists and 
son of
 writers,
son of proud
Jews
rewrites his list

today I write/substitute,
a new order,
a tag gladly taken,
a marker given,
some what in pride,
some in shame too,
first and foremost,
à la manière d'Lincoln
I am
of, by and for

"a bunch of folks in a deli"

proud member of them
that so identify,
for they are among those
that shall not perish from the Earth

those
happenstance-not,
bunch of folks in a deli,
I claim as
mine own,
as they would
have claimed me

no subtly professed,
a diminishment intended,
and now
an honorific taken,
Medal of Honor provoked and embraced,
proudly inscribed,
visible on my forehead,
in the black ink of mourning,
a Presidential Cain Citation,
a tattoo of letters,
not numbers,
now moves up to
head of the list,
I am
now and forever,
a member of that corps
(appreciate that double entendre)
I am
Je suis
JE JUIF

*"a bunch of folks in a deli"
Just google that phrase

Obama’s slur
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
prelimenary coordinates - a blindman playing chess.

well... you either drink, and write sparingly,
     or you don't drink, and you write
a novel...
    but who would have thought, that there
would be poetic odes involving coffee...
     it's staggering how many women write
poems and have to concern themselves with
coffee...
  i down a litre of whiskey a night, don't know
what a hangover is anymore,
        and i can beat out more words
than women, who use a stimulant and write
   crumbs... when i expect a loaf of bread...
if not this website, then another, and the scenario
is the same: the glorification of coffee...
           it just shows you how barricaded the human
narrative is, of the soul...
        poetry merely nibbles, and i know it's
flaws... write without paragraphs,
or care for punctuation marks... and it's immediately
a poem...
   or... oh god forbid! there's something profound
being said with a few words...
      and it has to be profound...
                      yes, i'm the Gargamel and those
are my smurfs...
                             strange that Freud didn't think up
the man-child complex...
                         which is the opposite of the madonna-*****
complex, which he actually did...
           Edward Hopper was also bemused by
these two mental pharmacologists...
                did a little sketch holding Freud as pillar 1,
and Jung as pillar 2.
    but coffee and poetry: i'd expect more from this
latitude...
        and it's still a case of:
                   people cling to the raft that's their
mental narrative mondus operandi...
                Kant tried to say something as concrete
with 5 + 7 = 13... and read any philosophy book...
    Kant isolates the ''i think'', and Hegel isolates
    the i = i, or i am i...
                              and these are serious thinkers...
but Descartes has said a limit...
                       thinking defines subjectivity...
      thinking the essential component of what's
   not thought about: the existential compromise of
   being per se...
                    and how i always seem to find philosophy
as a stumbling block concerning everything i write...
    it's almost as if i can't escape the world of
abstracts...          a degree in chemistry didn't help either...
     am i truly so un-realistic?
               not that i'm afraid of being drawn toward
the un-real...          it's that humanity seems only like
an infertile groundwork speeding toward a forgivable
promise...
    i just wanted to say: you drink and write poetry...
or you don't drink, and write a novel...
      and true to a heart's cause i will say:
that straitjacket of what poetry is...
                           whether rhyme... or other technique...
    hanging over it...
                           it can't do:
      i abhor Nietzsche for making poetry a science...
  and it is: too scientific...
              i'd never think so little can be deemed
so perplexing... or having that essence...
                    so yes... Kant
                         really does struggle to say something
profound, but he actually does...
                     over and over again... namely:
i'd never could think of so many faculties of my mind...
    not that's what i call a plastic saying...
      ****-licking brown-nosing, call it what you like...
it's just so terrible that philosophy cannot reach
toward being a humanism, like a novel always can...
     which is why i could eat a historical novel
        by Kraszewski in three weeks in between allocating
that time to the festive season,
                     and it took me 2 years to read Kant's
critique... until i let go of that post-scriptum necessity
of having to stop at every setence and do a rubick's cube...
     a bit like: well... aren't those electron-migration
   schematics they teach you in chemistry, a little bit pointless?
   who give's a badger's nut-sack about how electrons migrate
when a a cabron to oxygen bond forms?
                         but they do teach that...
           which is why you can take a novel to bed,
on the train... but so much focus is needed for that other novel,
the scientific one... the grandeur of... philosophy...
                and that's when i let go...
   the last part of the critique does allow you to read
piece of work... like a novel... unless of course that was my
need to do so...
                    so yes: transcendental methodology in Kant's
critique: does read like a novel... at some point
you just have to let go.

ii. ...

and you do... try saying philosophy without saying
something pretentious....
               and i dare say: as long as the fewest number
of people concern themselves with it:
  the more chances we have for electricity,
plumbing, food on the table...
               but by now there's this talk of a curse...
premature Socratic antics... mind you: he was an old man...
but Plato be ******, he wrote down what the old man
spoke: and a clear number of them succumbed to
      the tumble-**** effect...
                      no real prospects for life...
        and, evidently, the dead gods philosophised,
while the rest remained: prone to throwing a show of
macho, and worshipped the body...
Olympus shone...  
   by now you should know that i don't know what
i'm doing...
                  give me the killer-switch to launch a nuclear
strike and i'd probably say: maracas!
shake shake shake...     fidgety in the brothel...
shake shake shake...
             that's the weird thing, every time i went to
a brothel i became over-heated...
      i sat there, the whole **** place always reminded me
of a perfume... jack daniels...
   and i could feel myself over-heating...
  i don't known if that was the angel conscience talking
to me... but i always felt those eyes of scrutiny...
       mind you, once the whole "naughty'' escapade
took off... i forgot those relationships where
                    an impotence was crowned...
   don't know: maybe prostitutes just know my pin-number
and hold to say to little richard: off to the crusades with you!
     phenomenal...
                                         well... thank god for
the north african imports! i'd start thinking all european
women are bound to be: neglected.
               and was it ever, not only about ***?
    it's nice to doubt it...
                           next time i'll woodpecker a grave.
but hey! the promised land!
                           at least you'll have someone to cry
over your grave...
   and did i tell you how there's this cult of the grave
in Poland? yep, that's not a personal reality,
it's a populist manifesto... i'm starting to see it
as a hell where people sort of forgot to state their emotion
to the people, now lying in those tombs...
         give me a Hindu wedding with fire!
  i wanna become elemental!
and look, libido on fire... a billion vishnu-******* in
Bangladesh...   it's this thirst for fame in western
societies that's going to be a downsize...
                                 over there that's like a **** in
a tornado...              ha ha! it really is!
   but then again, here i am, a graveyard hyenna...
walking in Liberace's talk of style...
  most of these graves, really are: tacky...
    just like Liberace, the greatest showbiz conman of
the 20st century... i love the fact that he fooled so many
women... i mean... that guy was almost as good
as ****** when it came to mesmerising people...
but Liberace had a nieche audience... so...
                 no khaki for the ss...
                                           and i dare to hold
an ethnicity? in tune with bob marley: one love, one people...
it has never been so painful to strategise globalisation...
         it's this ethnic cleansing that everyone agreed to
provided they received a smart-phone...
                   or a McDonald's fetish... and that's saying it cheap...
but that's how it feels on the periphery of H'america...
little ol' England boycots Europe...
                     and it's like: huh?
                                           presto! dum-dum.
    sometimes i start thinking that i have a hydra for a tongue...
and the more i drink, the more i start to see
       it splintering up into a polyphony construct,
but more a case of: polyphony of subjects...
   and yes, aren't we all those internet losers...
when the most powerful man in the world...
     uses twitter. bastions of respectable comment!
yes, i.e. newspapers... we're riding this meteor to the end...
          does anyone still consider newspapers to be
the pledges of a free society? i must have been asleep for
the past 20 years then...
                      someone switched on this chaos-turbine,
and we're all shoving our two cents of opnions'-worth into it...
and it's not stopping...
            and yet you still read in newspapers, this underlining
feeling of being condescended... as if they are the sole
authority... they have to behave like little despots...
                           social media's power is invested in its
shock reverberation... think: Marx in the 21st century...
           but can you? is this some pseudo Marxism?
             i might have bypassed all the king-makers and
walls... but i have no leverage... my opinions are
     as cheap as chips... well: we got ourselves a unison converson...
   i still don't see how the television zeitgeist still thinks
that the internet zeitgeist is no connected with ''real life''...
i mean... **** me! where's the highstreet with all the shops?
on the internet. where is the frontline of wars? on the internet.
  where do suicides take place? on the internet,
from all the cyber bugs that people start to represent...
    if this isn't real life... then i guess i must be sitting,
and writing this in some medieval castle in transylvania,
    and my computer is powered by a legion of
hamsters on exercise-wheels, in a damp room, lit by a candle.

iii.

for me, this is how reading a philosophy book looks like:

| | |
     fig. 1
                                          /   \
                                            _
                 ­                                 fig. 2
    Δ
       fig. 3
                                           A
                                               fig. 4

it's like i want to see something with some clarity;
there is clear movement
      concerning a book like that,
              but unlike a standard novel:
there is clearly nothing concerning the: any given
  hope to disperse the mist.
                you're given the blunt truth:
the use of language...
                     again, it would be easier to call forward
a use of a tomahawk... or a guillotine...
            philosophy books never establish civilisations,
they break them.
                and do i think that the crucifix is a profanity
of the tetragrammaton? yes.
                do i feel Spinoza's anguish? probably.
when you read philosophy to start to waver,
it's almost necessary to unlearn language, and with
each philosophy book: learn it over again.
     you can't remain strapped to this culture
of emphasis of singled-out words...
              we can't find a constructive basis if we're
about to start any mechanism from such a dynamic,
isolating certain words and weighing them
                       obstructs language...
                 i can't even begin to fathom a pledge
to using a language, if there are these plebian obstructions...
i did write some notes when i spent these past 3 weeks
in Poland, but i'm scared of rewriting them...
                    i can claim to have understood
their content at the time,
but the context disparity is too much for me...
                 i'm rereading them in England
and i can only see England as a nightmarish construct
of such grandeour... that i might only be seen
speaking truth in the north of it...
                nor do i like the tri-tier categorisation
of man... if you read Kant, you'd be afraid of
man's laconic approach to the mind, stating
the three boundaries, and literally no faculty interactions...
  consciousness (the artist), denoting the overly-sensitive,
the subconscious (the worker), denoting the athletic construct
   and liberation from the daily toils of pure physical
    disposition...
and the unconscious (the zombie)...
   if you read Kant and explore the faculties...
and then turn toward the Freudian populism:
   there's enough reason to be concerned...
                  i can't be saying someone anti-vogue:
and that was my proper concern, that i might be saying
someone not recountable in any sort of realism...
          that mine is an isolated case...
         ditto alongside: why are we juggling the tri-tiers,
and so bombastic and even celebratory in huddling
toward these safety-nets of being human?
    thus said: the reflective man has died...
       in his place came the reflexive man...
                             and if there really is a worthwhile
stance to be a: **** sapiens...
   then all hope for a bewildered man is gone...
                 when the potency of robotics escaped science
fiction, and all trodden paths of orthodox science were
      fed to science fiction, humanity could begin
the process of discarding the offshoots...
          
iv.

the new testament... a book riddled with metaphors...
no wonder the greeks exploited the hebrew literalism...
and yes, plato the precursor made this very real...
by testifying that poetry had no place in the republic,
the new testament had to become solely poetic...
   the new testament is a rebellion against plato's republic...
it's a book wholly compromised on metaphor...
culminating in a book that's founded on imagery...
the gosepls are, once again, arithmetically speaking,
resembling the crucifix... which damns the concept
of the tetragrammaton...
                      as a book: it's only gibberish in
its final circumstance of revelation as a book of imagery...
   and in its preceding case: a book of metaphors...
who wouldn't be apprehensive to be born human
with such a thing being rampant?!
                    imagery is gibberish, given that we
have compentent painters out there...
and metaphor is metaphysics, given that we have
competent magicians out there...
   so how far apart are the words: qua             and
                   quo?
   as good a question as: how far apart are the words
                          phor               and phren?
       φoρ                       &                            φρην?
        so in the congregation of μετα, how are they
so apart?  looking at language from an alphabetical
perspective... it's hard to see anything inspirational...
    nor the tangens divergence of words
that are nonetheless so proximate in their construct...
a bit like the genetic proximity of man and ape,
or man and a banana...
   φoρ (the bearer of the beyond) -
                φρην (a mind concerned with things
under the curtain) -
                        and so: the futility of looking for
        a soul... became translated as the new found feudalism
of looking for a mind:
  given the common consensus: we're all mad....
so too looking at mythology could be revised:
  that myth of narcissus and echo...
or narcissus and psyche...
                         or φρην & πσιχη -
                we already know that there's an aesthetic
in Greek, at least they showed us
      that it can be σimple, when acknowledged
  and practised -
which means transcribing the ease of handwriting
   into a digital format, can be seen as an unnecessary
complexity - as if me currently looking for a word
that ends, and showcases the most obvious Grecian
aesthetic (without mention ο, ε, ω, η, œ)...
but with due mention: so where the second variant
of α, given there's æ?
                           it really is hard to find coherency
in human language... i'm still trying to conjure up
the second sigma... unless i hit the plural noteς...
there... i hit them... as simple as that.
  and yes: the father of the french hooked c
in garçon, came from this: the sigma used at the end
of wordς... i suspect that how things were denoted
to be possessed in english, also came from it.
once again: handwritting is bewildering on this digital canvas.

v.*

i don't have an atheistic argument, or a theistic argument,
i'v
Portland Grace Mar 2013
The second cup of coffee,
the first was not enough.
I need more gold caffeine.
I need a lot of things
We used to drink it together,
now I drink it by myself
every morning
I'd bring you a big cup
and you'd ask me if I made it with love
of course I did.
Now my own cup,
tastes bitter
regardless of the amount of creamer used.
I'm on my second cup of coffee,
the first was not enough
Jasmin Aug 2019
Sitting still with eyes that wander
The mind is sane yet lost in a wonder
"Coffee spilled from a broken mug
Though the stains remained to fog
It is now bared from a steamy hug."

Sitting still with rested eyes
The mind was unclear but now is wise
"No need for a mug, need not to hide
A coffee so precious must be spilled
To tame the wild."
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
.i. if Kant could have his von Kleist... well... who else to juggle juggernauts if not me? as a task of redeeming that poor soul who succumbed to the terminator of all poetic ambitions, with his systematisation off-the-page, as eccentric and punctual as a sunset on a sundial at 16:11... and in case either the spring of sunrise, or the autumn of sunset... but so many hours after exacting a sunset... that gluttony of the eyes to stare at it... 16:11 is the zenith of a sunset in november the 15th... much prolonged when warmer... supersized sun when setting in summer, and all that whiskey-copper wiring for the eyes to stare at it: oh for goodness sake, who really cares for Ikea likened assembling of words... we're not putting together a coffee table, we're looking for Darwinistic entrapment, we're scared of the aeons and yawns... we're trying to create a Darwinistic entrapment saying what segregates us from apes! that's how anti-Darwinism works - if they can easily call you a poet and a technophobe... then that hardly makes you a merchant with a Quran... to encapsulate the language of our modernity we're doing everything against writing the onomatopoeia of our beginning... monkey ooo! monkey ooo ah ah! or a gorilla grunting and then snorkeling... we're encapsulating our language more and more... because beginning with ape and then looking at history, and then looking at the consensus of the contemporary: Darwinism's greatest enemy is not theology... it's history... Darwinism and history are not compatible... oddly enough Darwinism and theology are compatible, simply because they are dynamically equal for the case of furthering both arguments in debate... but Darwinism is an odd starting point to argue, given that physicists argue from the perspective of prior to dinosaurs, prior to all things formed.

how can i begin this? it will leave me having to
write it for two days,
the anti-narrative sketch first, then filling in
the gaps sober... just to get second opinions...
i might have to cook a quasi-Hungarian borscht
and fry up a few potato flattenings to a crispy
yum... first the narrator comes in to describe what's
in store, a bit like a translator comes in and says
of Joyce: that's Irish... well, yeah.
               hence the italic preface...
as some would say, the person who wrote these
sketches worked quicker that an algorithm in asking
and also quicker to copy & paste the required
atomic encoding... e.g. ч and ch
                   э and euro and epsilon...
      once upon a time there was nothing prior
to Copernicus, then the somersaults came,
    h ч y        what coordinates where?
    well of course perfecting the encoding of something,
if things weren't stated awry there would be
no optometrists either...
                  it's not hard to read, it's hard to
remember how to read, given that being literate reached
the omnipresent velocity, the new powers had to
include some new power struggle...
mingling Latin and Runes, Greek and Cyrillic...
     and the proto-Latin of additional diacritical marks...
they exposed the entirety of humanity to literacy
within the framework of post-industrial society,
after hitchhiking a ride on the 19th century donkeys
they suddenly had to reveal their power-secret of
being literate, and by the account of women:
corset bound and bored in salons...
      but something else appeared that didn't really fascinate
them: that over-complication of Latin with
punctuation marks above letters: or diacritical
distinction, crowns over letters, subatomic particularisation
of once favoured: universal applicability...
as a narrator? i have to make a complicated
introduction, the sketch lends itself to do so,
it suggests that not all writing can be as simple as
a nursery rhyme, not all writing can actually
    **** memory, not all writing desires being remembered,
not all writing can be remembered,
                in the mediation of the two chiral opposites
there's fiction, which is suspended in an armchair of
pleasurability... but on the opposite side of a nursery rhyme
or a well versed poem? writing akin to arithmetic...
  something truly painful for those competent with
lettering, but not really competent with ten digits...
      as a narrator who has already read the sketch,
i'm trying to not write a "filling in the gaps" to the sketch
like an art-critic might do to a painting deviating from:
brushstrokes were employed. well... d'uh!
variation of italics as in transcending the pause that
implies a condescending variation of taking a pause,
also excluded are: dot, comma, hyphen, semicolon
and colon.                         dot-dot-dot is not joining up
the dots: it implies a variation of how to anticipate
a punchline: drummed: tu-dum wet snare!
     i am actually a narrator who is trying to find
that other part of me that might digest this sketch properly,
     and return fully competent to pick up another
sketch... if ever there was a narrator in this sketch,
it has to be me, after the sketch has been scripted,
and i am left to suggest a need for a dot-dot-dot connectivity
of the strokes of the pen...
i warned myself: do not overdo the introduction in italics,
you know how picky people are...
whether pickled pineapple of cucumber...
i swear Turks invented pickling chillies...
         oh look! an inflatable gazebo filled with helium!
no one's laughing: only because i didn't mention vegina.
narrative puritanism? you get distracted a lot...
but this sketch is really a thesis for narration,
all i have to do is find the antithesis of narration in it:
an actual narrative!          it stretches for ~30 pages...
   well that's me turned archaeologist with a Grecian urn
with a snap of the finger... because that's how this
sketch looks like: ancient -
                         but understandably modern.
              so .  ,  - and ;
        were racing... out came the world record
             9.58(0)         the full-stop is the bracket-bound
0... i.e. it actually happened: hence the pinpoint...
or in Formula 1 a timed nonsense of ave. m/ph
     noted to three decimal points: 130.703...
                                    or chicane cha chicane cha cha!
as said, this is an actual representation of a narrator
encountering this sketch: so before you lose your head...
i've lost mine!
  look at the correlation though!
we've gone way past atoms with the atomic bomb
and encountered subatomic particles...
    we're not going to get beyond subatomic particles
because we're going to encounter the already apparent
reality of obatomic particle: namely our bodies,
   the perceived ******* (ob- is the antonym
                                                  prefixation of sub-):
             that's were the microscope adventure ends,
    and this is parallel to cutting up a second with
three decimal points, as the safetynet suggests:
                                                              π / 3.14;
yep, the obstructive - hence we can't spontaneously
combust... but then again Goethe's Werther did:
  out of love... down the spiral: you sweet little *******.

~ii. i'm actually too lazy to write the sketch and fill
in the blanks... so i'm going to fill in the blanks as i go along,
  or that's what's called the rebellious stance of narrator: mmm,
work in progress, could you see that coming?


ii. a beer in between glugs of whiskey - runes
combined in the ******* / sigma, variant of agliz or
the rune-zeta extended toward a dark shadow of the rebirth
of Ishrael: zoological enclosure; sigma *******
sigma ******* sigma *******, sigma *******...
rune-zeta... we cannot say there are ******
mathematicians and poets akin,
not then one optic encoding states
     a b c d e
         another states f u þ a r
yet another а б (ρ) в г
  α β γ δ:
for worth of gamma into a trill only because of
   a wave, that's ~ approx. on the side of the letter
   e.g. г & r.
   or rho upside down? what the ****?
did Voltaire write this? reading Candide,
i hope he ****** did!
you the problem is pixelated paper? if you know
how you enter a deciphering mode...
                    but you require a personal library to boot,
all that dos formatting,
                       well there's formatting in the humanity
outstretch of this white medium too...
after it isn't all ******* white when all the psychiatric
pills are white too... i have really found something better
than the Bermuda Δ...
       Greek, Latin, Cyrillic and Runes...
i could say neo or proto otherwise,
but i still haven't unearthed the sketch, that
is probably puzzling the Danes, with Cnut on the forefront...
                    but the arrangement of numbers is universal,
but it's not universal, given the particularity of
how language is encoded and why some people are
richer than others...
            but it's still a beer between glugs of whiskey that
makes more sense...
i said, retype the sketch and go to bed...
and i figured: that's probably the wisest of all possible
events stemming from this...
    that's ~27 pages of notes to retype... and i'm already
in a disclosure mode as to expect what's to be jargoned...


p. 1        cкεтч       /      σкεтχ
   necessity of                        (acute
a-       -the           (ism)
is that of language structure,
          only from the use of one's language does
a deity present itself: from within the noumenon
ground work, not the reverse, as in from
(pp. 2, 3)
                 a phenomenological exercise in
the use of language: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, (etc.)...
       e.g. Islam is a phenomenon,
  it's not a noumenon: or a thing-in-itself...
  for the Islamic god to emerge from Islam's-in-itself
Islam will have to prevent itself from being-outside-itself...
or overpowering other in-itself contentions
but still: to no apparent success narrative of true intention
as satisfactory appropriation and hence lending itself
to a widespread nod of approval.
  challenging space: word compounding, or the space
between conjunctional deficiencies: nod-of-approval (e.g.).

p. 2    concussion (great film, Alec and Will, 2015, NFL)
concussion... Blitzkrieg Alzheimer's....
brain is fat.... dementia = attacking proteins...
  steroids... the noumenological use of language:
e.g. that ****** is an enigma,
therefore his views will not go viral,
and he'll not become fashion trendy...
it's not individualistic idealism, it's reality.
as will die sonne satan - orbis reach more than 5K
views... so... clap clap... clap, clap.
           what i meant about the a-     and -the
and the ism is following a sentence that sort of
does away with conjunctional fluidity,
apart from the big words, i treat all minor words as
categorically conunctional... and, the, a, is, to, too...
given the sentence: brain fatty *****,
brian organic giraffe wall... ******* hieroglyphic...
           stood above the rest, rest assured.
  dementia: invading protein cells
   (bulging prune of the opportune: purely
digestion?) no thought to eat or eat itself like,
cannibalistically. the brain is fatty...
not fat in muscle for mmm, schmile and flex
for the selfie. how about a protein inhibitor?
(by now, rewriting the sketch, i've lost the page count,
it's actually p. 5 of note paged toward 27).
how about the explanation that we're living in
times of post-industrialisation and thanksgiving
feminism? to me post-industrialisation has created
a class of meaningless white-collar workers
and no blues... it's what the Chinese blues call
the Amazonian nomads: ******* happy...
no amount of crosswords or sudoku will exert
your body to do things for others...
   no amount of mind games will actually tell your
brain to be equipped with: a bunch of hyenas... run!
dementia is a result of creating too many
white-collar jobs (thanks to feminism)
and exporting the blues to China (thanks to feminism
and: oh i broke a nail, can i get a Ching plumber to
fix my heating while i get a ****** to **** me up my
****?!) - maybe i'm just dreaming...
it's great to censor dreaming, i mean: you stop dreaming,
you get to see reality, and you don't even need to
read Proust on a ricochet.
  - so we have brain as fat, and invader cells as protein...
protein digests fat... and creates cucumbers out
of people... where do the carbohydrates come into play?
it can't be at the point of a.d.h.d., can it?
     i'm blaming post-industrialisation, the complete
disappearance of the blues (formerly known as the reds,
in the east) for the whites...
or that old chestnut of: my god you're goon'ah luv it!
   to till for worth from the sweat of yer brow -
funny funny funny... to earn your loaf of bread
you will toil...
                   and toil until you are physically assured
that not ghostly / mental life can enter your world /
books... that went well... didn't it?
   i should be tilling a potato plateau rather than
be bound to be writing this epic (by modern standards)
poem...
             but that's the curse of exporting all the blue
collar jobs to China, then importing mindless
white collar jobs to the west, what the hell do you think
would happen, not the pandemic of dementia?
if you do not exert the body, and then you do not
exert / exhaust the mind... do you think
you can secure a narrative with a post-industrial
westerner on the premise of that person simply being
able to solve a crossword? well... i believe in santa
claus too... but i don't believe in him giving out
presents... because to me, in my oh-so-called maturity
that's called an anagram of satan's clause: which is a legal
term for: i can turn civilisation into shrapnel
of what's said and what's to be said: and what's not to be
said. people can't expect to turn honest labour
for the recreational run on the treadmill in a gym...
and they can't expect photocopying in an office space
to replace Newton's curiosity, and then compensate
all this distraction with mind-games...
          can they? well... they did!

poets are gagged by writers of prose,
no wonder they write so sparingly,
      they are gagged in the sense that they write
as if asphyxiated: they need breathing room.


well sure, if he can revive the Polish steel industry
and i can go back to steel plates and pillars,
then the rust belt will get a polishing also.

or what's called: shrapnel before the waterfall of
narration: darting eyes, and poncy **** all the way through...

     muse... muse...

        well, how about we take the fluidity out of language?
declassify certain words into one grammatical broth,
say words like i and they
                              a  and the    are all conjunctions?
how about that? let's strip it bare, after all: what categories
of words exist for us to primarily speak (let alone think)?
     nouns, verbs, adjectives... adverbs?
       but all those words in between are so jungly classified
into a tangle that i'm about to sprout a handshake
          of a Japanese vine grip: and never let go...

an actual extract from the sketch:

      https that doesn't recognise UCS
                   and insists on IPA cannot be deemed
       encyclopaedic


              i need runes for this! i need runes for this idea!
i don't need transliteration right now...
                but hey! that's an idea, etymological transliteration...
bugly term, sure, but the previous night i was thinking
  of transcendental etymology, as you do, likened to
carbohydrates... so it was transliteration after all...
but a dead end when it comes to geometry and Pythagoras...
      
    three words... and they are computerised (i guess you
have to buy a decent book to decode this), a bit like
buying paint in a d.i.y. shop...
       16DE (dagaz / d) 16DC (ingwaz / ŋ / grapheme of n & j)
                  16DF (ōþala / Valhalla / o / ō = oo),
in total d'njoo / d'nyoo - even i concede the fact that this
is a ******* mind-******... it's a ****** congregation of
four optic encodings of phonos... i moved away from
the ancient greek fetish for the logos... i'm looking at
the phonos... not the logos with Heraclitus et al.
               φº θ þ фª f

ªgreek
  ºcyrillic                ever see a prettier pentagram?
                      i haven't.

(false original title:
škic / cкэтч / φº θ þ фª f: thespian pandemic - pending)

looking at the phonos is painful, actually painful,
it's like reading a book with a myopic pair of glasses:
a ******* aquarium blurry right there, befor...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

'e'? were you: was i, looking for an 'e'?

i can say this much...
what do you get when you mix a shot
of whiskey with a shot of bourbon:
i'm moving between bottles...
it's nearing christmas eve and i'm a ripe
taoist... i.e. i better this world:
by not having the world mind me...
on the odd occasion: oh... you're still here?!

yeah... i'm still here... i have glued-to-fascination
with my shadow... i'm just waiting
for the atom bomb to relieve me of a body
but ensuring my shadow is kept intact...
as if it were a Monet signature on a wall...

but i lament... the momentum has vanished...
i don't even know why i'm so idiotic as
to presume that: from the hour 22:00GMT
to the hours 00:00 circa 00:30GMT...
something will land into my lap,
my lisp... my cranium the oyster shell
my tongue the oyster...

it will not... i can't simply **** anything into
an existence that doesn't want to exist...
perhaps lurking in a canvas of:
"lost luggage" in an airport...
perhaps "there"...
i could be excused my... lethargy...

when was this written? back in 2018?
so i was thinking about teasing cyrillic even then?
wasn't i?
sketch cкэтч or?

what do you get when you mix a shot of whiskey
with some bourbon?
a Burguandian whisker...
i am not going to sound witty...
Ron's key...

that's still a cyrillic "or"... isn't it?
шкиц: škic...

i'm... deflated... nothing "new" has come my way...
i would have thought that...
reading some Knausgård would have /
could have... invigorated me:
reading him was supposed to be my:
dialysis my transfusion!
my zombie-go-to-literature...
it has proven an exhaustive enterprise
to begin writing again:
i became too comfortable
in reading - i almost forgot
the agony of writing...

alas... a contemporary of mine...
and someone well adjusted to prose...

notably: who would have thought
that death in june - the calling (MK II)
was something to be recorded in 1985...
for one: i wouldn't...

but i did begin: back in november 2016...
begin what? to tickle the cyrillic alphabet...
which is way before i discovered my reply
to the runes... to the ancient greek...
and this... "ancient", ahem... still in use...
latin script...

that script that went into the molloch couldron
of being invested in to code...
pristine as the hebrews cited:
how many holes in it?
to write onto a canvas of 0?
q Q R O o p P A a D d g b B...
which leaves...
W E T Y U I S F H J K L
Z X C V N and M "out of the equation"...

škic / cкэтч / φº θ þ фª f: thespian pandemic (pending):
i better rename it as... circa 2016...
that's way before i even acknowledged
the cyrillic text applying diacritical markers...
i thought them too crude at the time...

beside borrowing outright from greek...
the already at hand oddities of glagolitic,
notably: Ⱎ...Ⱋ...

it's only a single word i'm using...
i have abandoned all notions of metaphysics
in favor for orthography...
i'm not going to burden myself
with: what's after the physics...
i'm after: what's now...
in the respective tongues...
2 tongue deviations from
the original latin and greek...

what came with the runes and what
came with the glagolitic scripts...
what was ****** and had to succumb
to inter-breeding...

come 2020... i will have one clarification
to base my existence on...
pronouncing the growth of my ****** hair...
i will hope to aim at a length of beard
that will forever hide the neck...
i will aim at... somewhere to the level
of my heart... when i will then manage
to turn my beard into an orchestra's
nieche of violins when i procrastinate with it...

since 2016...
i have identified russian in ******...
i've seen it... finally!
зъaрт... i.e. żart
and the "hard sign" becoming a "soft sign"
in źrenica: зьрeницa...

i still think the russian orthography
is... as... primitive as the western slavic...

after all... зъ = ż...
зь = ź...
the balkan slavs have a caron...
which is neither a hard or a soft sign / acute...

their caron is... ч (č) or cz...
CHeaper in english...
and their caron is ш (š) or sz...
SHeep...
or the two together...
and always шч (šč): szczekam...
i'm barking...

pu-shch-air... a rare example in english
of the puщair...
but then lookie lookie 'ere:

CZACHA... skull...
ЧAХA...

perhaps this is my "revenge ****" on russia?
hey! boris the kremlin mascoot...
come and 'ave a look...
with how i disect your orthography
on the / with the language that asks
too many metaphysical questions and no
orthographic curiosities!

i'll meet you in Warsaw... given that you're
probably moving from Novosibirsk...
and i'm either in Stockholm...
Edinburgh or the outskirts of London:
Warsaw will be halfway for both of us...
you don't have to like Warsaw...
i only like it when the Ukrainian smugglers
and the Mongols appear
in the West Warsaw coach station...

smart as who? i am discovering this for
the first time myself...
i was only teasing it back in 2016...
way before i found the right sort of accents
in mother russian...

i do know that that crescent oddity:
above the ja: йa... is what it is...
if you only cut off the head in english... ȷ...
again: it's я given that most russians
are pulled toward an anglophile world-view...
they all see the window to europe...
the baltic and st. petersburg is somehow...
London... and the atlantic...
like hell it is...

i guess i feel it was a waste of time to
have re(a)d Kant, simply because:
i'm not here for the schematics...
i want to know how my thought my labyrinth
building architecture is coming along...
but with no one to talk to about it?

i found the categorical imperative most
dissatisfying... i didn't want to abide by universal laws...
poetry is already shoved out of waiting room
of the republic...
if my "poetry" is not a categorical imperative...
and it's not quiet a a hypothetical imperative...
it needs to be sharpened on a thesaurus
and some grammar...

categorical (adjective)... imperative (adjective)...
well two adjectives never imply much
if there's no noun involved...
and i'm pretty sure that... if i sharpen
the next word i'll compound with categorical-
in that hyphen construct that's only
allowed in oxford dictionary english:
since it's not: propergermannonhyphenfaustian:
i.e. carboxylic (carbo-xylic) acidity...

poetry doesn't belong in either
the categorical imperative focus...
nor the hypothetical imperative focus...

i.e. i must write a poem... to feel better...
i must write a poem... to organise my thoughts...
no! a poem is not a maxim is not a categorical
imperative! a language of poetry is not
a language of morality: it's a language
of experience - or a lack / a lackey's "sentiment"...

i need a... categorical: impetus!
it's not enough to have read kant's critique of pure
reason... it must also involved
having re(a)d the: groundwork of
the metaphysics of morals...
but i'm a democratic reader...
i need to hear the other voices...
i can't be a kantian scholar...
a snippet 'ere, a snippet v'ere (funny how
THETA disappears when making the posit:
THERE - ver!)

who needs metaphysical absolutes...
when orthography (or a lack of it)
in english... spreads open its legs...
and the tongue remembers its tongue-brain-phallus
stage of co-existence in the oyster?!

i'm pretty sure that a categorical imperative
is by no means a categorical impetus...
this had to be written,
but it had to be written in order to disregard
anything a priori... prior to it...
a poem is a shady concern for action or inaction...
it's a deviation from the cartesian crux:
res cogitans (thinking thing)...
into the cartesian levy (res extensa)...
it's an action of inactivity...
as much as it's an inactive activity...
"the rest"...

impetus is not an imperative...
an impetus sources its meaning in a per se
investement... of itself - in itself - for itself...
an imperative?
in pronouns... impetus: i want... i will...
imperative? you want... you will...

an impetus is self-dictative...
an imperative is: indicative...
someone would rightly claim...
those that mourn indicatively...
will don the right garments for the process
of mourning...
which is indicative and devoid of
the per se manifestation of mourning...
it is an imperative when compared to
the impetus to mourn -
which is self-dictative...
which does now shallow itself in
grief by making a socially agreed to fiasco
of a very specific choice of wardrobe...

basically: however you like it...
an IMPERATIVE ≠ IMPETUS...
the year is almost over and i want to break-off
the dust from the thoughts that fudge-packed themselves
as worthy of occupying the minor instance
of having to count a depth of:
not dead within the year of being written.
Jay 1988 Aug 2016
I’d lie at night and dream one day you’ll be mine
Watch you from one of those passing cars
Slowing down to get a glimpse of you looking so fine
Sitting in the window of some coffee bar
Sipping some skinny late,
And I’d wish that cup in your hand was me

I’d dream I was that cup in your hand
And your lipstick would be stained on me too
I wish I could get as close to you
As those waiters do
Who bring your coffee cup
I stare intoxicated, drunk on your beautiful looks

I’d dream I was the person sitting in your company
I dream about you a lot but hey a boy got to dream
It’s the fuel that guides me
And keeps me going when I know I have no chance
Of being the mug your lips kiss, or the waiter who longs for
Something more than a summer romance

Maybe I could stop my car and stare no more
If I sat near you then maybe I’d see
That stolen cars and coffee bars are just places within my dreams
I see you smile but hey, what does that smile mean ?
It’s the not knowing and always guessing that keeps this red blooded man keen
It’s not the rejection that’ll hurt, for being with you might not be all that it seems
Because if I’m with you and your not as good as you were last night in my dreams
Then I’m cheated of my desires, my dreams are all lies
And I won’t know who I am anymore!
So I’m happy being that guy, driving some rusty car always slowing down past the coffee bar
Admiring you from afar and I’m going to dream of you again tonight!
Gourab Banerjee Sep 2015
Over a Cup of Coffee
Together on a corner table
A less known name
Or better an unknown
Would you mind to join
In all alone...!!!
An eve of snowy breeze
Not a dry leaf winter
Still if a fresh Autumn
A few dew drops
Scattering on the window
A few mumbling chants
Wanna utter before you
I wanna confess
The magical yet ethereal
Would you mind to
Over a Coffee.......!!!-03.09.2015
"You are my escape from trouble,"*
you said.
And I am honored.
It's a different feeling
knowing that I am a safe harbor
and a refuge.
It is nice to be needed.

But I want to be more
than just an escape:
I want to be wanted.
To know that I am not
just your safe house,
but your favorite place.

I want to be the one you run to
when you need space to breathe.
Sure.
I want to be your breath of fresh air.
But I also want to be
the one you want to go to
just because*.

I want to be your favorite coffee shop
where you go
to start and complete your day.
I want to be your favorite coffee shop
where you go to when you're happy,
bored and tired,
and when you want to be inspired.
I want to be your favorite coffee shop
where you go to write
and where you just wanna pour out
everything that is in your heart.
I want to be your favorite coffee shop
where you go to
just because it is your favorite coffee shop.

I want to be your favorite art gallery
where you go to
when you want to see beauty.
And even though you've been there thrice
you'll still go back
because you know you'll find
the beauty you wanted to see.

I want to be that playground near your house
or your favorite park
where you go to, to just unwind
and clear your mind.
I want to be a place where
you know you can be you
and just relax.

I want to be the bookstore you go to
when you need new ideas
I want to be
where you go to
when you want to discover new wonders.

I want to be your quiet place
where you can seek
and ask
and think.

I want to be your refuge
I want to keep you safe
I want to be your home
I want to be your favorite place.
Written May 18, 2015
for You. :)
petalsofhope Nov 2013
people watching in a coffee shop
is one of the simple pleasures in life
the bizarre satisfaction you get
when you sit by the window
solving crossword puzzles
or probably sipping your cup of hot latte
immediately tilting your head up
when someone enters
analyzing, wondering,
as they pass by your table
what kind of person they are?
what coffee do they drink?
what do they do in the coffee shop?
where were they from?
who are they with?
thoughts by thoughts
questions by questions
curiosity kicks in
eventually clouding your mind
as you nibble your chapped lip
finally finding a solution
to the crosswords
also your futile thoughts
without hesitation
you give those people in the shop
every single one of them
a life
based on their coffee
just some random thoughts of mine

— The End —