Bring Your Own Cup Painting -work in progress

Coffee and his shop

I used to live next to

the coffee master and his shop

He was older and smiled

at me in a way that should

have made me feel uncomfortable

One time, oh I think it was a little after

eleven a young man in expensive jeans came

in and ordered coffee with gobs of sweet and fat

and the coffee master said,

“You don’t really like coffee –do ya”

I laughed so damn hard

I nosed some of my coffee

The coffee master looked at me

the way he looks sometimes

at young women and then went back

to his roasting and muttering

perfection

And for some reason

when I get real down and lonely

I go to a coffee shop and anytime someone

asks for some gobs

I expect to hear – You don’t really like coffee

-do ya

but  its some yippy shit–some

jack ball behind the counter

who doesn’t like coffee

either –just a job

to pay the porn bill

and so the coffee tastes like

straw and stale almonds

pressed in puddle water

-served in a wide mouth cup

on dinky little saucer

and I’m the one saying,

“You don’t really like coffee -do ya”

as I leave before I can be asked

if I want a free refill

Speedy Pete

In this town I mumble

 -here in the autumn air. 

This town is a stranger.

The people are in a hurry

to say a thing and be on their way

I am like one of the old timers

I used to pour bullshit eyes and coffee 

for at a slime diner.

One of them, nick-named

Speedy Pete, cause he drove slow

in a corvette asked me if I would leave

husband for an old

rich man and I told him

yes I would.

 

What I really meant to tell him

is I liked him the way he was

honest and blunt and sassy and reliable. 

He always ordered the same;

chocolate banana pudding pie and a cup of coffee

with half of a creamer and carried

a picture of a model with a black lab

because he said -she looked like me. 

 

There was little resemblance

besides she had brown hair and smiled.

 

 This old coot with rotten teeth and dirty clothes 

lived in the middle of the woods

without electricity or running water

but he came into town to see my crocked smile

 

 

He was always talking shit and saying this person

 or that person was a fool and that people didn’t like him

 cause he told the truth.

 

 

I’ve always been a bit of a mumble mouth myself

so I trained my ears to hear what he said and carefully

asked him to repeat what he said when I didn’t

and I’d smile when I said that and he would smile back

with rotten goof  the way little boys do

when they got a good and dangerous idea.

 

 The chain smoking cook and the big hipped waitress said,

he smelled horrid and I shouldn’t encourage him.

They said, to watch out for him or else I’d find myself in the woods.

When he died I was away at college and had been divorced

and didn’t find out until the summer after. I missed him