coffee shop blues

coffee shop blues

I'm feeling like the coffee shop blues
a cup of Costa Rican and no rum
beautiful girlies drinking lattes
with laptops but I can't find my word
when hello seems not to suffice
dim lights and soft jazz on the speakers
curtails a desire to shout out
LET'S JUST GET DRUNK
those girlies would raise their eyebrow
over their glasses and coffee mug
continue to study
think later of whiskey and fucking
while taking their final exams dreaming
I sit restrained legs jittery
double Americano triple sugar white cream
I'm feeling the coffee shop blues again
I need a drink
I need a lady's grace upon me
and a folk song played on a stolen guitar
hard bop jazz folk rhythm to dance to
to dream of fucking to fuck to
while drinking gin and beer and rum
with a woman friend
a Caribbean tune to feel the sun
and warm up these coffee shop blues

A Fallen Maple

My hand brushes
across a branch
fondling the
leaves like
fingertips of
lost lovers,

the tree leans
over crying,

later is broken
up for fire.
It still burns
under a griddle
as I pour maple
syrup over
pancakes and
contemplate dying.

A Goddess of Any Sort

What whiskey night delights do we find

in goddesses’ bedrooms

when we doze off dreaming

into the bottle

and what goddess existed

before worshippers knelt

before the self-proclaimed

were born deities?

Could we ever be mortal with

your disheveled romanticism

of homeless beatniks

and Bacchean whiskey orgy

crazed black-out nights,

and home to you

are we and this scene,

self-proclaimed goddess

of the moment—

of poetry and booze

or whatever ambrosia

intoxicates us as the sun

rises to our eyelids’ fall.

We poets, counter

to the counter-culture

live with timeless youth

and use time to pass

our lives, until we

resurrect ourselves

as legends, immortals,

and groomsmen of God

and hedonism,

in one last happy marriage

of revelry and sanctity.

We are the heroes and heroines

that nobody seems to notice,

who break the monotony

of being, they are

never kneeling

but worshipping

with envious subconscious

and lustful, poetic desire.

It is you

goddess of your mood,

of poetic prophesy

and promotion

that keeps our motion going

even after our meter

is rusted shut

and our rhyme

is hung-over

passed out in some alleyway,

when our lives seem less

eternal, and more likely

to end before our time

it is you

who proclaims us

alive.

Of Naked Desire

Has it been so long since I've touched a woman's breast
or witnessed the beckoning curve of her bare hip
that I would sacrifice my heart to love and fortune
to put down my lust's misfortune on my lips
and forsake my remains for their sins?

Was it not yester's eve that you bathed naked
in the lake, but oh how I missed the moonlight,
both my breath and touch are in one voice
that they would have conceded if the moon might spy
that naked angel for whom I cry?

It seems seductively senseless to me
but desire is born of the skin not the head
to erect these desires for such a figure as this
that will drive good men mad in their bed
wallowing in dreams gone unfed.

Has it been so long since I felt a woman's breath
warm on my ear as God whispers from above
that I would renounce God himself and Heaven
for mistaking this fleshly desire with love
and never release my longing for your touch.

Young Love in Greene County, IN

He had rolled-up red shirtsleeves
to show off his biceps,
a pair of tight-fittin' blue jeans
and a fishhook on his hat,
his belt buckle was as big as a hubcap,
52' Buick I would imagine.

She had a white straw cowboy hat
and tight faded jeans to match,
her hair was long flowing brown
framing her face somewhere between girlishness and
womanhood,
her cowboy boots made her look taller
and she swore that somehow they were comfortable.

She danced the electric slide
and he danced something,
but at least he moved
and he was trying,
but as they stood together in between songs
one could not help but wonder
how he could squeeze his big country man hand
into her tight back blue jean pocket.