Thanks for the Coffee

Thanks for the Coffee

At 6 a. m., I sit smoking one cigarette after another,

Listening to the birds babble outside my window,

Hoping the melted, mushy feeling in my brain is hallucination

And that my head won't really melt down

Before my 8 o'clock class

And I wonder why the hell I stayed out so late

To listen to college kids pretend to be beat poets

And why the damned birds don't just shut up.

Squinting my eyes against the smoke

That wrinkles my skin into leather furrows

And pausing for another sip of coffee --

My life's blood,

Which races my heart to premature entropic quiet --

I think of Art

And remember San Francisco

Too many years ago when --

Fresh from a war for which I was far too young --

I wandered the city's streets with that girl

I had met on the plane from L.A.

When the stewardess let me ride first class

Because of all my pretty medals --

From the war for which I was far too young --

And we stopped into a coffeehouse,

I and that blond girl with the big brown eyes,

And there was far out coffee

Such as I had never tasted

In the Ozark hills or Indochina

And people reading strange lines and making weird music

Such as I had never heard

In the Far East or Ozarks

And I fell into some sort of love --

Not with the blond girl

Who lived somewhere on Pine Street

And made Treasure Island a nice memory

And whose name I don't even remember --

But with the poetry and politics,

Which I have never since been able to separate,

Of the coffeehouses in San Francisco --

When I first came home from the war

For which I was far too young.

So when I sit here at 6 o'clock in the morning

With my blood feeling like hot razor blades,

I consider Art . . .

And Revolution . . .

And think perhaps the Movement didn't die

As I had thought it had,

That somewhere under that lysergic cacophony of the 70s

And the noisy, mindless, greedy me-ness of the 80s

The Revolution somehow survived

And I almost expect to see Che's picture in the paper,

Or hear Dr. King thrill me to gooseflesh,

Or watch the kids bleed in Chicago,

Or die again in Ohio.

It's a comfort two hours before class

When my head feels like a smashed windshield

And the damned birds sing too loudly

At 6 o'clock in the morning

To remember where the Revolution began

And that Art belongs to the people. . .