COFFEE

i. Mania

We’ve been touching each other’s manias a long time 

A long time in this bed

I thought I might never come home to

Lying down as if I had been gone a thousand years

Not just the time it takes to grow up in

And I returned to that perfect bed not quite grown up

Because I didn’t realize that each lying down has its getting up

That I would be getting him up each morning relentless

With that gentle kick and reminder that there is coffee hot and ready

I am the coffee girl it’s all thermodynamics now

What is hot or cold, where you going to find the heat you need

No one suspects the intellect lurking in the kitchen

Drying hot jars, wet jars

Imagine heat and wet in one place

That place being my hands 

Imagine me in that kitchen with towel and jar, waiting and drying

Waiting for the heat of jars to dry themselves

Dreaming of lips sweetened by coffee

Dreaming of creamy white breasts

Italian mouths nibbling biscotti and smiling the Mona Lisa smile

Cups sitting neatly in saucers round indentations

She said if I were a boy she would fall in love with me

And she knew I would never be a boy

I started drinking more coffee and sleeping less

Because it was easier not to be in bed at all

Because I had no bed where I could tell these things

Could say I was thirsty or scared or needed holding

To lay that body those cares down and not be alone

I am the coffee girl it’s all thermodynamics now

What is hot or cold, where you going to find the heat you need

No one suspects the intellect lurking in the kitchen

Drying hot jars, wet jars

Imagine heat and wet in one place

That place being my hands 

ii. Crangle

Those nerve endings instead humming raw and nervous

On four cups a day like a power station humming

Electric wires of nerve singing, power house of synapses tingling

Heat the zeroth law of thermodynamics which reads:

“Once you’ve loved your lover on the kitchen stove there will be no more.”

Just knowing warmth 

How close you came and that it will never be quite what it once was

To lie down and feel no more becomes what you want

But I heard some good blues from a distance

And I came back back to find the mojo of being alone 

Being 21

Being home

I came back to find the ghosts are still the same

iii. Vertigo

Those first nights we slept with the house wide open 

Silken

Going outside nude to smoke cigarettes in the yard

Clouds scudding over us and making us feel dizzy

I wanted to fall 

Fall in love

Vertigo

A desire to fall

iv. Dreaming of Espresso

What gets more chaotic gets more the same 

The warmth and chaos of enthalpy and entropy 

To be always jumping and getting nowhere

This particle moves and jumps and tries to ignore those physical laws

The persistence of moving particles over time 

Particles over time and distance

Valences and limitations of uncertainty 

The mysterious way you can feel my hips move when I dance and you are far away

I remember the day they taught us the answer

When my high school physics teacher said she was pregnant

I remember then that it all made sense

That these particles moved, were attracted

That what is hot has a reason for being hot

That there is one set quantity of matter, of love

And we have to chase it round and round 

Circling in our orbits

I am the coffee girl it’s all thermodynamics now

What is hot or cold, where you going to find the heat you need

No one suspects the intellect lurking in the kitchen

Drying hot jars, wet jars

Imagine heat and wet in one place

That place being my hands 

You may not always be welcome in my bed

But you’ll always be welcome in my kitchen

I will leave, but there will be coffee left in the pot for you

I will leave you coffee which you are welcome to drink

But don’t expect me to wash the pot, throw away the grinds,

I plan to go away smiling, leaving you and dreaming of espresso

Standing here, saying these words, these words standing up

Saying themselves: lying down with a whisper in your ear

Lying down in that perfect bed one’s been coming to for a long, long time

Saying “Hush, it’s OK, I’m the right one, the woman of your dreams”

But this is not a poem

This is a reality of touching each other’s manias a long time in bed 

This is not real  

These are words standing up

Leaving