BY JAN HAAG
COFFEE
5-17-00
Early in the morning
the coffee machine breathing
in
breathing out...
Out of bed again,
the terror
mounts...
Another day...
Life growing more and more
expensive,
expensive in dollars and cents
and sense and fear
and
age and creation...
The U.S.A.
constituted to
produce
anxiety...
The declining body aches
ages with
besotted memories...
Memory ageing, clouding,
dissolving.
The
coffee machine breathes
in and out, in out, and
urinates its black
brew,
to be sucked up to
course along the veins...
Older now,
older with the sweetish
smell of age? of old? of the pulp mill?
the
coffee? a bad liver?
Breathe for me, O coffee machine,
zap the
brain, tickle the mind
turn on Word and Start-up
in the poetic
mode,
tease the creative tooth.
Terror, fear, disgust, offense,
anger,
vomit -- all the offal sells better:
sell, sell,
sell!!!
ItUs a new regime
skirting the hypocrisies
of the
gentler, nobler age
I grew up in.
WeUre back to Genghis
Khan,
forward to Mohamed the Muslim,
world conquerors riding
in
on stock options,
beheading the rest,
making life too
expensive
to live
for those who only want to
breathe
a
little coffee,
a little coke,
the nothingness
of a pleasant day,
a mild evening.
"We have known this world before,"
cry a few
historians of the race.
World conquest is back in fashion
in
disguise.
Four or five masters,
the rest slaves
begging even seed
from
corporate oligarchs.
Is it end of the race?
They never
did learn
that the many
can support the few
only so
long;
then the world
crumbles:
Angkor Wat
Machu
Pichu
civilizations of dust
in the Tarim Basin
Gone,
gone,
all gone.
The coffee has stopped breathing
in the
pot.
The caffeine embalms my veins.
for ten minutes more --
then
blissful
death.
Copyright © 2000 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu
BY JAN HAAG