Sitting where the coffee comes

Sitting where the coffee comes

Sitting where the coffee comes
Scribbling here,
—when did it where did it how did it

Turn……

Ma Shelley’s at 2:00 am.
It is my home, my niche, my dwelling… 
…the place where I presently reside in the morning hours when sleep does not come
or I slowly push it away. 
After four month, either could be accurate 

The maroon-forest décor is circa 1992
Booth bench fabric, the embossed pattern now slick from its 24 hour nature
Maroon to mauve to pink
Forest to light pea green

Each night I visit my table.
Nancy knows when to bring coffee
Coffee flows to me, the oxygen I breath to survive another night
Her and I’s rhythm perfected during past hours
Trading small talk and looks
A few conversations comparing past mistakes and regrets
For all the “no regrets” speak, she recounts them everywhere

Metallic cloud, the chemical quaff
Tool and die workers came in
11:30, after the shift
Talking quietly, over there,
sitting where the coffee comes

Its their home, their dwelling, an actual escape
their stories I hear nightly,
My comfort now, Recycling of repetitive lives
— Romantic, drawn out, neither
The secret tenor, the closeted playwright
Yet not for this story, not their stories

It is mine and Russell’s

Months pass, post mortem begins
a loss for words and a loss for thoughts
and I still sit where the coffee comes

there were
fights over his smoking, over my movies,
the basis of music and heaven and the devil

And he would speak of beauty found in a sitcom from the 1970’s
That had only 9 episodes and poor acting and ridiculous dialogue
All within which he reveled
And I would argue that camp and culture were not equivalent


“are you high?—no, roger moore was the only true bond, how could you ever think that Sean Connery compares”

“Robert Frost is still potent, Jackson-best president, the most underappreciated, guitar genius—Roy Buchanan and who did you vote for in the last election? “
“In      credible!”
“Put that out, I can’t get your fumes out of my scarves”

There were…Struggles


over motives
over the night hours

I would wake at 6, he at 12,
One off at 3, other off at 11:30
Saturday night, one would budge, then the other
Sweetness exchanged with a trade of patterns
Yet stubbornness consumed that quiet ritual

Two covers, never enough, freezing
Frozen, shaking by morning,
cursing when waking,
Chaos and tension mistaken for love,
or taking over love

Open and open and more open…almost there,
Then banter decomposed into destruction
Its gone-
Closed.
Completely.

Cup is empty,
Nancy brings more
A carafe in one hand and an ashtray in the other
Sitting where the coffee comes, I light another and let the paper absorb the blue