Coffee (A Conflict Of Values)
Catering to a certain need
For stimulation, even relaxation
And the psychic high,
The coffee bean in cool, dark tin,
Fragrance and the oil in
The box or jar or bag’s supply
Of pleasure ought to make the drinker
Think a little about why
The bitter sweet is such a ‘stinker’
In whose absence droops
The mood, the energy, the good;
Drink whose undemanding look
In innocent or gorgeous cup
Creates the nervous, wrecked and ‘hooked’ –
Converting down to up.
Dear, oh dear, I fear
That life with coffee’s here forever;
Symbol of that quiet urge
Insistent – to reach high as sky
Feel the charm of stimulation,
Pleasant conversation’s purge.
To say this has a feeble ring.
Stimulation from a thing?
Surely pleasure comes from other means,
Less addictive than caffeine –
Out of reach of smell, taste, touch
Of java’s clutch (was Java Dutch?)
Of conversation’s time-filled waste;
Something needing not a brew
And not the company of two.
But then, energy from what?
Surely not a coffee pot!
Dear, oh dear, the will is weak
When pleasure lies within the cheek
And one has never learned the art
Of keeping silence in the heart.
Nasty habit! Coffee evil!
Wreaking havoc like the weevil
On plantations of the body.
Devil’s guest! One ought to use you as a test.
You steal upon the cells by stealth,
You speed up heart, adrenals, pulse,
God knows what else?
Claim vitamins, create unhealth
And still the peril lies elsewhere:
Down where habits have their lair;
Where vice meets virtue, mean, excess;
Where the lamest and the sagest
Battle for their piece of peace.
Posing as a social duty,
Threatening in its bitter beauty,
Dear, oh dear, I fear that life
With coffee’s here to stay,
My own cup a mere hour away.
From Macbeth, the coffee oath:
Stir the sugar, stir the milk,
Make the coffee smooth as silk,
Help the migraine, the depression –
Be benign in my transgression.
Tranquilize away confusion,
Make gregarious the nation.
Cof-free, cof- fiend? enemy, friend?
Or just coffee
And what you make it to be?
©Coffee (A Conflict Of Values) 94.4.21
Definitely Didactic ; Coffee Book;
Arlene Corwin
Arlene Corwin Poetry 