Coffee

Coffee was meant to be served hot, black and strong
Strong enough to make a dead man walk
Not this frozen milk shake
Overrated frapuccino
Coffee-mate, vanilla, caramel crap

Coffee is where she dyes her grays
Where we meet by chance
Sit, smoke, and people watch
I mean, what else are we supposed to mix our problems with
if not coffee?

Coffee is the gathering place
where intellectual conversations turn to white noise,
where some pretend to live “La Boehme”
some draw their dreams on napkins
and others wait impatiently for their late lattes
always in a hurry, like hyperactive sheep

Teenage alchemists
blend and roast and serve and watch
while I sit and write
tattooing words with this fountain chisel pen
again, I fall captive to my well know rhetoric, I smoke, and smoke, and smoke

Lovers kiss, people talk
hyperactive sheep run amok
and the world wakes up
to the smell of freshly roasted coffee
coffee served hot, black and strong

Cigarettes

We smoke for the Garbo, we smoke for the Bogart.
We hide behind a smoke screen that portrays intellect, ego
and the world travelers' subtle arrogance.

It's our cosmopolitan watermark.
Charming the smoke like a snake
no, no apple.

We hold our cigarette in a very special and unique manner
an expression of art
and through it we make it our own.

Like a fountain pen in the writer's hand
With it we chisel our life in black ink tears
over rolling paper white.

And for you, dear quitters
post-mortem cough fakers
hovering flies outside of our coffee shops.
You can keep on faking the cough that you so loudly parade
when you run into us, sidewalk smokers
We won't reply or complain on your lack of social adaptation
we can't.
We are too busy flirting with the world
drowned in mouthfulls of that misterious and charming smoke
gray sometimes
like the vapor state of stockings.
Yes, the smoke is all you'll see.

-update 6/11/11 been smoke free for almost 4 years

Light Bulbs

There's nothing wrong with the light bulbs
electric acid fireflies
... I just prefer candles
no, nothing to do with romance
it's more about their clandestine light
which, just like lust, has nothing to do with romance.

Pablo Milanes plays in the background, almost deaf
the last bottle of that stinking German Riesling you gave me
is almost empty now
I drink it slowly
from the bottle, like it should be
I mean, dressing up this cheap wine
(which is one step away from salad dressing)
with a crystal glass, would be imperfect in form.

I rest my weary head on an old Armando Chacon book
tired of the tedious monotony, bored, bored, bored
I wish my "Caffe Ladro" friend was here
but the train has already left.

I light another cigarette
and another
and another
Staring at the smoke in spiral flight
around the flame's dancing tongues
bored in the tired infatuation, like me.

Zombie gipsy,
confused to the point of no return
I find myself pointing at my head with a pen
hostile ink fountain, word chisel
I could swear it looks like a gun sometimes
no, nothing to do with romance
and there's nothing wrong with the light bulbs either.

On these spotlight times
I prefer the light of the candle
because it's clandestine
because it illuminates in secrecy
while having nothing to do with romance
I guess that nasty Riesling didn't turn out so bad after all.