coffee_for_you im not laughing yes? 011226 ... but i am of course 011226 ... im not laughing oh_dear. he doesn't drink coffee.....just tea. 011226 ... im not laughing except for that time that he took a sip of my french vanilla. goddamn. 011226 ... but i am you call _that_ french? yeah, and anubis is a woman. 011226 ... im not laughing oui, oui. femme la bouche! 011226 ... but i am champs elyssee, 1985: 15, with mom and dad, eating bread, yeah, fucking french, duh, "veen?" sez mom. 011226 ... im not laughing no, that would be 5. 011226 ... but i am were we there at the same time, little girl? was that you drinking coffee next to me at the other table. that cup somehow didn't seem out of place in your hand. maturity and a childlike dream in one set of liquid eyes. "latte," you said, if i remember correctly; but that was 40 plus years ago. my memory is not what it once was. my bones long for release. 011226 ... im not laughing um. um. *passes the sugar* 011226 ... im not laughing coffee and toothpaste don't mix well. ick! 011226 ... but i am so with a soggy day-old new york times draped about my shoulders (a sorry excuse for a parka), i stroll away from the farmers market, instantly consumed by the buyers regret provoked by the pulpy peaches. damn. now my coffee's cold, i'm cold, these peaches are crap. that little girl's smile though--i can't shake it. 011226 ... im not laughing that little girl didn't smile very much, though, so you must've caught her in a rare moment. 011226 ... but i am paris a beautiful shithole a little smile goes a long way in a coffee-bitter life she took that pile of coffee grounds in me and flung it onto the compost heap--shit on shit i knew not what fertile soil would spring forth, would bring forth "of all that is, seen and unseen" 011226 ... im not laughing the little girl was wondering if you needed some affection. she thought you looked tragically lonely. 011226 ... im not laughing the little girl thinks you are a poet. 011226 ... but i am another twelve years pass. well into my mid-sixties now, i wonder if i made the right choice. how many cups consumed? the caffeine has eaten away the softness inside. the girl is now a woman and she sits across from me at a small portland coffee shop, warm, well-appointed, quiet, warm. her patience with me after so many years is more than i could ever have earned. "chi ku"--eat bitter--she once told me the chinese say. somehow i think she was already aware of that, on that day in 1985. she knew that nothing changes, that our eyes simply shift focus. flavors of nostalgia overwhelm. i'm reminded of being at a hockey game in my toronto childhood. naïve wisdom she has always been to me. 011226 ... im not laughing first, peach tea in the kitchen by candlelight.....and toast with strawberry jam. then, sips of french vanilla coffee on a bench with a bastard from the past. 011226 ... but i am tired, so tired. coffee, coke, ecstasy--nothing works any more. the jet trams don't work any more. we don't work any more. sure, non-attachment, said the coffee drinking buddhist. but it was only horse glue and twine holding things together anyway. why do we struggle so hard holding on to things that can't even hold on to themselves? them, they, the selves disconnected from us and each other. a man in a pope's hat, going to a costume party in greenwich village, walks past the shop window. we both stare. sixteen years as a liason to the south american coffee growers cartel. what a fucking joke. i was the joke. exploding sunsets above the forest canopy, iridescent snakes a mile long, primates with parakeet plumage, and i could only think of her. 011227 ... im not laughing you could only think of her, you say. but she's sitting on a pile of sand across the vast ocean of dreams, wondering why she can't seem to drop the thoughts of you. 020205 ... niki make mine a frappuccino please! 020205 ... im not laughing the thoughts of you? the *thought* of you. perhaps both in any case, thinking of you makes melodies in her mind. they are merely shadows of music.....but she sees them flicker every now and then like lightning light light lightning... 020205 ... but i am bolts cascading down from the miami sky, hurricane season just arriving aaron belle carl denise ethan i look across the room filled with humidity, from sea/sky and machine, and imagine her face in the face of the girl on the tapestry on the wall, on the eastern wall. i imagine her lifting one foot from the heavy pile of sand and placing it with assured wisdom and passion into that ocean. with that one step her dreams and mine merge, lucid flights of infinite song. the shadows become real, expanding. the only melodies he triggered in her were stirred by her rosy cheeks seen over a half century ago. she was the center and the source. "'Hold on to the center' (p5). I am with you." the rain continues its own parade outside. i am perched, looking down into my own grave, knowing, at least, something learned, something beautiful and life-giving. sweet bitter not harsh. like the bitter melon she taught me to eat. wrikled yellow skin, flavor cutting through the doubt. 020205 ... im not laughing she has no melon to offer you now. just the juices that flow, falling like water in a waterfall, falling onto you. she wonders if you want that, if that will suffice her juices those juices she wonders about you: could you be him, only in a different form? 020205 ... im not laughing it always takes you a while to get home, to reach home, and to sit down and jump back into the blue sea. where will you swim tonight, my dear? north, south, east, or west? 020205 ... im not laughing sit down, then spring up, high, high, extending your body across the night sky, and dive into the blue 020205 ... im not laughing oftentimes the girl thinks that she's waiting for nothing. nothing, nothing peel away the shade and look out into bleak black nothingness null void it's not worth it. 020205 ... im not laughing nothing is, really. when it comes down to it, i mean. when it comes down to *it*, it's all just, just, just me. just me. 020205 ... hsg now being served in the mornings at my apartment 100427 what's it to you? who go blather from