"coffeepot" poems
Welcome to my home, oh won't you come in?
Allow me to show you around, would you care for a drink?
Tell me your poison, maybe a highball of gin?
I keep it in the kitchen with the coffeepot by the sink,
or maybe you'd prefer a tumbler of crown?
Whiskey is right in the foyer by the doorstop,
there's nothing like a nip right before I bounce.
And if it's wine you crave, it's in the living room atop
the tube television beside the VCR in it's place.
But if you've a tongue for peach schnapps
then make your way to the crawl space.
Whilst your up there I say, would you do me a fave?
Look in the attic for the bourbon, it's beside my baby pictures,
and bring it down for me. I'm sure that I saved
some from the last time I was up there alone with self-stricture.
Oh you don't care for bourbon, then maybe some brandy?
The cognac is somewhere down the basement,
but ignore the rope and the candies.
You're unsettled you say? Then rum's how to spend
drinking the night away with me in the den.
OH! Just send a beer your way?! you should've just said!
A six-pack's in the bathroom, right next to the head.
Mar 4, 2015
Mar 4, 2015 at 8:48 PM UTC
Cacaw cacaw
sing the sparrows
to her tiny china toes
the shadows criss-cross
the cherry hardwood
like a board of tic-tac-toe
tick-tock! the phoenix
rises from her coffeepot
tickling her freckled nose
she scrunches her forehead
into a fan and pats her alarm
good morning!
ambles to the sparrows
sighs out the exhaust
and breathes it right back in
another day
another sheet in the reams of paper
of people
she purses her lips
into a folded envelope
seals it with a kiss
and slips it out the window
wonders if today
she'll be the one
lost in the mail
Apr 27, 2010
Apr 27, 2010 at 1:40 PM UTC
Wake up earlier
Spend less time online
Spend more time outside
Every day, do something that scares you
Take more deep breaths
Realize you can't control certain things
Dance naked to 90s music when no one else is home
Meet new people
Meet old people – they have better stories
Listen to more people's stories
Learn to see things from different angles
Learn to look for Better Angels
Walk more
Drink more water
Drink less caffeine
Don't leave the coffeepot on when you leave the house
Be more aware of your bad habits
Be more patient with others' bad habits
Seek something every day
- even if you don't find what you're looking for,
at least you won't have wasted the day
Don't start smoking – despite what you may have heard
about what it does for stress
Worry less -
about what you can change
Change what you can
Stop writing cliches
Stop blaming your inaction on your home town
or your parents
or your emotional instability
Take responsibility for your inaction
Read more often –
you have books you haven't touched, ever
Write by the water –
the white noise of river helps you think
Return more favors –
people have been kind to you
Be kind to more people
Don't small talk –
small talk is for small minds
Don't ruin a good conversation by talking too much
Make something every day
(art, love, decisions, etc)
Go to bed earlier
Mar 15, 2014
Mar 15, 2014 at 9:41 PM UTC
That is not a mild story,
She neglects it;
That's a sunken bittercup black.
Only what can be told;
Sip it up, never call her again.
Like a sign of approval
On your daily fetiches,
No sugar, skim right;
As you're taking it in, she can live with it.
Learn how affected one is
Under caffeine,
How it mingles with you,
Becomes your resting point.
Like it's when you wish
You could be dormant;
Only then she reciprocates.
Let it help her recapitulate
Your story:
Passage in sentences,
Words into syllables,
the dull infused with some glory.
May 20, 2022
May 20, 2022 at 4:54 PM UTC
red wine beads at my brow
I wait to wince
poppies dance out in the yard
in the little warmth from seasons since
her feet trail away
the broken magnum at mine
head, heat, blaring haze
scythes at the atlas of my spine
scorn and disgrace
raw and insipid
the sun turns its face
lends whatever light to the wicked
she said she'd put the fear of god in me
but god is not what I fear
not what oppresses my feet
nor the ache of my best years
he does not hang from her tongue
like the prize of her spiced ***
any vestige of will; any spirit, any trace
for any iota of refrain
quashed, quelled
concealed and contained
another fickle whine
another fleeting wish
any mistake I've made is mine
and hers are carried on the wind
she speaks like the end;
the war, and then what's won
no more sour a tend
than to the wounds of what's been done
the world armed to defend;
her foes a heavy sword against a throng so young
infantile infantry
ripened from infancy
what a weapon are my sons
what a kindness she's coughed up
Jul 13, 2018
Jul 13, 2018 at 9:28 AM UTC
Half asleep feet shuffle in aimlessly;
Water fills the celestial coffeepot.
Chocolate brown grounds by a spoon are allot.
A spoonful spills to the floor! This marks its tragedy.
Another, another, so painfully,
This tragedy would make any distraught.
How can sleep be torn from eyes so bloodshot
Without the black elixir so holy?
The sleepy feet walk through the garage door,
Each brooms' handle is long like cold harpoons.
It sweeps up the wasted dreams on the floor.
"I measured out my life in coffee spoons."1
The tedious toil begins once more,
And so go the morning coffee mistunes.
1 - From "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot
Apr 28, 2021
Apr 28, 2021 at 2:46 PM UTC
Winter Peter noticed him from the stares of the village children. He whittled away as he waited for the stream that never came, and the child stood because old Peter made five nails and five splinters.The child could see no more eyes when he peered across the bench with a pair of boots and holes with so many windows. Darkness, the coffeepot, the stove, and the child asked two large slices of bread my name, and a bowl of coffee drank the hot bench. "Aren't you the eyes?" the floor asked Peter, the boy, the shavings, and the other boy.
"What?"
You eat your third well sorted slice and still I could do with the truth and the boy's eyes. "Yes, he said Thursday shall have a silver trade." But the cold looked at the bed behind the stove ready to cry. Sleep, then the patience, my young princes murmuring in low voices.
"So who is dead?"
"My mother is dead."
"You don't live either, so take three young brothers and..."
"And what?"
"End the family of one young boy on the side of the mountain."
Six on his workshop could be useful, and meanwhile I could give him baskets in the morning. All that day he (from dawn till dusk) sent away baskets of things (every night). Now and then the bears and wolves my sister prays for gave away some advice on the ways of those cleverer than they. Prayers will always be nothing.
Mar 8, 2011
Mar 8, 2011 at 9:21 AM UTC
bad day omens come in threes (and a P.S.):
1. bad day omens come in threes,
a Trinity Church with a graveyard
included and attached, (1);
when your breakfast
navel orange targets,
aims & squirts on
its namesake orifice,,
a prescient hint for
a freshly cleaned
white T-shirt day,
first bite of the date
2. a trinity requires three,
the day is young,
so when sun up shines,
surely a positivity, nah, no!
just to make a point,
immediate comes out a
glazed donut
coating haze
that says impolitely,
no sir, “nun-uh”
3. go to the kitchen
for fresh coffee,
hearing a car
pulling out,
finding note,
on coffeepot-propped,
neatly folded,
To: Only Love Poetry
*”Cannot do this anymore,
don’t forget to turn the
coffee machine off”*
P.S.
*Can’t afford another costly mistake. Pre-treat that orange spot.
It was good for awhile, till it wasn’t, but our spots, just won’t
come out, no matter how many times we tried, stained permanent. Sorry.*
onlylovepoetry
Oct 31, 2020
Oct 31, 2020 at 11:21 AM UTC
i want to move into the hollow of your heart,
pack all i own into my battered backpack
& lay it out to rest on your bedroom shelves,
run run run down
the ice-slick streets in winter until i finally reach you,
until i am home/to be alone/with you
there are years that ache like bruises on my thighs
& years that are soft like rabbit ears, like flannel pajamas
like the way it feels to have found you.
at last, at last:
the morning birds murmur their musings
as we sip cocoa so sweet & so hot it scalds my throat
but not, but not,
but not nearly as much
as your mouth brands my lips yours.
someday, someday,
someday, pretty baby,
time will pass in kisses,
the coffeepot hisses,
you will find yourself waking
in a cathedral of our warmth
new-day light spilling over our bodies,
the ocean-state sheets –
you will know.
you will know – i will tell you now,
but someday you will know -
you are going to be safe,
finally safe, forever.
i will love you. i will love you. i will love you.
Jan 8, 2015
Jan 8, 2015 at 10:35 PM UTC
I wake up with this pain in my head
One like you wouldn't believe.
I run water for the coffeepot
And I look in the other room
And you're passed out
And I just need to get away from here
I want to pack my old duffel
And get in the old Forester
And go back to him:
With his sanity and his steady job and his mossy eyes
And you get up
And amble in beside me
Wrap your arms around my neck
Kiss me with such disappointing abandon
And you could have knocked me over with a feather.
And I go upstairs,
Look in the mirror,
Cry tears of defeat, and put away my bags.
I hear you singing from the bottom of the stairs:
Hi ****** dee dee,
God ****
The pirate's life for me!
Oct 26, 2010
Oct 26, 2010 at 12:20 PM UTC
It’s five o’clock; the coffeepot
rattles, sputters, gurgles as I
assemble lunch and feed the cat;
another morning, another dark
beginning to an endless stretch
of days flowing to some unknown
rendezvous where it all ends, what-
ever it is, wherever what is where
it is when it ends—the normal beat
upends such morning meditations.
It’s so hot when I walk outside
sweat begins to bead; I wonder
when we’ll reach the September
divide when the first front moves
down from the north, sending leaves
scurrying forth, plopping outsized
raindrops on the dusty earth. The
rain falls south along the coast, or
follows the freeway, leaving our
trees to brown, and gasp, and die.
Drought clutches the ground like
an ardent lover not to be denied,
sprinklers but a feeble effort to
fight off its insatiable lust to ****
the very marrow from the land,
scattering dead pines and blanched
oaks in ones and twos and threes
across lots and yards whose green
grass and manicured gardens belie
the dying waste that’s setting in.
The morning light oozes in from
the East, a sickly yellow glow on
the jagged tree line invading the
darkness behind a band of blue;
as I ease out onto the two-lane
toward the freeway where already
cars are stacking up in their rush
south toward the city’s towers,
the radio lists the casualties of
the latest shooting madness and
I begin to wonder about those in
power, and how they sleep with
so much carnage, before I remember
power and psychopathy are close
allied, and those who serve serve
only to survive. I then negotiate
the on-ramp to another day where
minutes, like cars, flash relentlessly
by in multi-colored hues, and death
rides shotgun in ones and twos.
Sep 7, 2016
Sep 7, 2016 at 10:29 AM UTC