I figured I best take a lid,
Fantastic plastic white.
The plant is real. The pot is not.
The coffee’s real enough and hot.
The day spins with delight.
Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme “plastic fantastic”.
Tag: coffee
Long Ago
My first job was in data processing. The night shift gave me the day to enjoy the city. I mounted magnetic tape onto drives as tall I was. It was a job that begged to be automated. That was long ago. Like Sisyphus, I can still see myself mounting those tapes only to take them down again.
My walk to work led past the Art Institute. I spent an hour each afternoon wandering through the exhibits. I can still see some of them.
One of the benefits of membership, at least in those days, long ago, in what I would even call the mysterious dark ages of my life, was the free coffee that the Institute offered in the afternoon. I became a regular around four in the afternoon with a dozen retirees who were always there and a few strangers who might wander in some afternoon and whom we would never see again. I can still taste that coffee.
Through daydreams blow the breeze of memory.
When shadows break I look and sometimes see.
Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Jilly is hosted with the challenge to the traditional form.
Photos: “Blue and Green”, above, and “Red and Green”, below.
Kindness and Coffee
One kind word and coffee will
Open up my heart to you.
If you’re out of coffee, love,
That one kind word will do.
I wrote this while drinking a cup of double espresso with steamed milk at Java Punk Coffee in Colorado Springs. It was the best espresso drink I’ve ever had. The photos above and below were taken at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. I am linking this to dVerse Open Link Night.
Coffee Soup
I brew coffee in a French press and pour it into a blender. With a tablespoon I take a large amount of coconut oil and place it in the hot coffee. The heat slides it off the spoon. I often stop there, but one can always carry things beyond.
The full recipe which I am writing down for the first time right now goes further. I add a tablespoon of butter or some cream, but not always, and then spices because if I don’t eat them they will stay on the shelf: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, black pepper, turmeric and pink salt.
I blend these ingredients for a few breaths and pour it into a mug. I wonder if it is still coffee? It doesn’t taste like a colada or Cuban espresso which wakes me up, since I drink it alone, on those dawn walks when I wait for the sunrise with the birds. It might even be a kind of soup, but the buzz of clarity that aligns my awareness to reality tells me it doesn’t matter.
MOST LEAVES HAVE LONG GONE
BERRIES PROUDLY ON DISPLAY
HOME FOR TINY BIRDS
Text: Linked to dVerse Poetics. Paul is hosting with the theme of poems about drinking.
Photos: “Berries”, above, “Winter Vegetation”, below.
Coconut Oil, Bad Guys and the Rising Sun
I don’t think the brain wants coffee as much as coconut oil. I put a large tablespoon of it in my coffee each morning. I know that sounds gross, but milk is just as gross, if you pause briefly to think about it, and don’t get me started on what coffee shops do with whipped cream. I prefer coffee strong and black in a real mug, but the brain doesn’t only need coffee to see straight.
Truly true stories don’t have bad guys. There aren’t as many out there anyway who want to feast on us like we feast on whatever we can. It’s not that there aren’t bad guys, people who, even with the gates open, even with there being no gates, even with there being no outside, feel unworthy to enter paradise. It’s more like we need some coconut oil in our coffee to see them better.
I take for granted that the Sun will rise in the morning. Is that because the Sun or the Earth loves us? We don’t like to think so, but what we like to think doesn’t matter when it comes to reality. Besides, we will abandon them before they abandon us. If I were the Sun, or the Earth, I would love to indiscriminately scatter crumbs to whomever was out there, good or bad, like an offering.
Some people drink coffee out of the skin of an avocado–or so I’ve heard. That drink must be hard to hold. All they’re lacking to make a really bad mess is whipped cream.
Linked to Jill Lyman’s Day Two post in the series 28 Days of Unreason based on reading Jim Harrison’s Songs of Unreason. The theme is about the Sun forgetting to rise.
Photo: “Rising Sun” by the author
Cracks and Wrinkles
I drink coffee and think of a handmade, blue cup that I used for decades. That cup felt right for my fingers and mouth. I remember being told how it fell and how the handle broke off while I was away. Were I home I would have tried repairing it (without success), but it was thrown away. I did not complain. One can always buy another cup, even a technically better one, like the one I am using now, handmade and blue.
I see wrinkles change the smoothness of my skin. They’re not like cracks in pottery. They age well or not so well. What makes them age well is worth more than the gold that I have heard some use to repair a beloved cup and it cannot be bought. Whether mine have aged well or not, teenage cashiers now give me the senior discount I didn’t even know existed.
COFFEE HELD IN BLUE
SUMMER HELD IN HEATED AIR
BLUE LIKE OCEAN WRINKLES.
Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday hosted by Grace with the prompt “Kintsugi: The Art of Broken Pieces”.
Photo: “Low Tide Atlantic Ocean” by the author taken at Myrtle Beach, North South Carolina.
Donuts With My Coffee
One is coated fresh with fame.
One is dumpier with dough.
One has frosting smoothed with shame.
One trades sugar for its soul.
Some are tasty. Others not.
All are gone before too long.
Sipping cappuccino hot,
Foamy calmness, sounds of song.
Linked to dVerse Open Link Night #188.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 