Where once the moon watered the down,
the back of my hands silvered with tides,
I stand in the time worn wrinkles binding me.
Aroma heady, taste bitter, acrid and black
bite my lips with heat.
Savor the flavors found in an oily seed
as they plunge through the caverns, tracking
the trail from fingers snatching and grasping
the fall of mountains, the waggle of an ass's back --
the shouts and cries of traders pinching, tasting
screaming prices and denying every penny's worth.
It hits all at once drawing a long sigh from my lips.
Black, natural, full to the brim, steaming --
my first cup awakens
every day’s adventure
Your eyes capture my youth and your kisses catch
me every morning wondering why the sun
has joined the moon in glowing silver
through the thatch upon my head.
My sense of adventure is tangled
memories: children’s chatter,
the weight of debts,
money and friends.
Coffee on my lips
now the taste
where you
lingered.
12:29 PM
08/09/08
Alexandria, VA
Author notes
Picture 2
A contest entry
- black coffee in bed by Saffron.
1000 points, ended August 24, 2008, 19 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Romance Picture Inspired by ennovy.
700 points, ended August 8, 12 entries
Bronze trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think, what it makes you feel, how you are moved.
Comments
1 - 53 of 53
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Black coffee and the taste of love lingering on your lips, sounds like the start of a good day to me. Thanks for entering, and good luck in our contest.
Novy & Brazos
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We can live in a vibrant and delightful world when we allow our senses, not only to be filled, but to speak to us, as well. Glad you enjoyed. thanks for the bronze.
Tom B.
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Oh yes I see that black & silver in the hair....and your words do fit well with pic #2...thank you for entering our contest....novy & brazos
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Glad you enjoyed my dreams in the heady swirl of the aroma of coffee.
Love,
Tom B.
Thanks for the bronze.
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Tom,
This is a wonderful poem--I am thrilled that you wrote for this contest. I truly adore this, and I thank you for sharing your talent here.
Saffron
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Just thought you might enjoy a study of the ways we awaken to the light and how we pull the richness of the world into our grasp.
Love, Tom B.
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I drink coffee with my cream and sugar. LOL I want my java to be iced, lighter, and sweeter than me. LOL
I love the use of metaphor. The symbolism is stark and highlighted in every line. You got on a roll here and kept snowballing! An excellent take on the given prompt.
"Aroma heady, taste bitter, acrid and black
bite my lips with heat.
Savor the flavors found in an oily seed
as they plunge through the caverns, tracking
the trail from fingers snatching and grasping
the fall of mountains, the waggle of an ass's back --
the shouts and cries of traders pinching, tasting
screaming prices and denying every penny's worth."
This passage in and of itself is a poem that salutes sensual perception with skill and ambitious talent.
BRAVO! Brilliant work!
The best to you in the contest, although I am sure this writ is at the top of the finalists' list. Couldn't miss!
Much Love Always ♥
Reneé
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I wanted to get outside the simple perceptions. There is a brief soapbox oration in the part you quoted on how everything becomes part of commerce and barter. We, the artists, the sensualists lift things back up to their sacredness, restore humanity.
The dance with age is also about no matter how much it changes it all remains the same. We appreciate more when we know how quickly we can have less.
Love Tom B.
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Hello Brother Tomis ~
The journey amongst groves of aromic bush.....tattered bottom from burros bounce.....grrrrr.....the things we will do for a cup of java
Nicely penned.....good luck and God bless,
Bear ~
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Thanks my friend. This was sort of an adventure in waking as I get coffee in bed. The shift from dreams to the mundane to the fantastic.
Glad you enjoyed.
Love, Tom B.
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REMINDS ME OF NERUDA A BIT, AND THAT I LIKE.
YOU ARE AN AMAZING POET, GOOD LUCK IN THE
CONTEST, YOU DESERVE IT.. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.
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Yes, Neruda is one of my influences. So is Ferlinghetti and Wallace Stevens along with Dylan Thomas. By my rebirth, I am wallowing in my awakening to sensation so have let the sensual steal into my words.
Love,
Tom B.
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WOW
If only everyone could see love the way you do - maybe the world would be a more ideal place or maybe even less hateful, instead of using love as an excuse or a weight. It seems like you have the soul of an olde Shakspearean poet brimming with youth placed inside a mortal body. Taking something so simple combining it with a powerful emotion and making it loll with the waves of the oceans, the mists of the mountains.
Purely
Simply
Amazing.
♥
Jordanne
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Awakened and too aware of time's ties. The lingering tangents that carry dreams take me to coffee captured and sold. As the gifts of the present begin to bleed into the dreams, love spirals up and around, the dream she is. Still time is a rock and the mundane begins its path of ruts and potholes across our storied life. Love? Always. Forever. Until we stop believing in life itself.
Thanks for all your kind thoughts. Thought I would share my own synopsis just to tangle your thoughts.
Love, Tom B.
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Nicely done, love from a mature man's sincere and wonderfully subjective point of view. My only disagreement lies in leaving off the word "The" or something else appropriate in terms of English. But I realize I am carping about a very nice - even lovely - piece of work. Despite the slight flaws, well done!!
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I only drink my coffee black. I want to know the full body of the bean. Gifts come through the dreams in the first morning light and I transition slowly into a more organized now. Life, vibrant, is seductive.
Thanks,
Tom B.
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i love this Tom. I was reminded of our coffee poem
This is splendid! and now I want a cup of coffee... I would even drink it black! haha.
Love this. I wish you the best of luck in the contest. Looks like a winner to me!
p.s. the very last.. the ending is my favorite!!! such sweetness in that bitter blackness!!
Love you always,
Mel
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Every morning -- when the heat is still in the covers and dreams still stretch the consciousness with languid fingers -- makes the sensuality tangle with the aroma of coffee. Think: the contrast of bitter coffee and the sweet kisses of a lover.
In the end the dawn creeps in and the blackness becomes shadow.
Love, Tom B.
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well done
Aroma heady, taste bitter, acrid and black
bite my lips with heat.
Savor the flavors found in an oily seed
as they plunge through the caverns, tracking
the trail from fingers snatching and grasping
the fall of mountains, the waggle of an ass's back --
great imagery.You did excel in this department loved reading this peom.Please visit some of my portfolio and offer comments
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Thank you. I wanted to catch the tangets we start on and the way our focus resolves, becomes more personal.
When I have my operation tomorrow and have had a chance to recover, I shall visit.
Love, Tom B.
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Oh beautifully sacredly sensual....such is coffee on such mornings.
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The object of much devotion from Bach to Starbucks to the quiet filtered light entering a bed room, we drink our coffee and dream.
Love, Tom B.
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Hey, thanks for inviting me to read this one. I read this one in the morning, which was perfect because here I am with a cup of joe and some cottage cheese for breakfast. It's my favorite part of the weekend. I could totally get your feelings and your train of thought on this one because I was just feeling that way myself. I liked the style on this one. Different but good!
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Wanted to capture, touch upon, the way we use coffee to come back into focus and that perhaps what we call focus is more of a denial or creating a place to hide when it could be so much more.
Love, Tom B.
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Such vivid imagery you have here right from the outset 'the back of my hands silvered with tides' - how evocative. It really makes us feel the age growing from without. I also liked the way you pared it down reaching towards the climax of the final brief stanza. Packed with burning descriptive detail as ever, I really liked this, huge luck in your contest, though you don't really need it! Thanks for sharing.
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A little luck never hurts
Thanks for enjoying the way this one ties images together with the trails of time.
Love, Tom B.
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Coffee on my lips
now the taste
where you
lingered.
Yeah baby!
This was fun, and you're right, had I read this earlier, maybe the day wouldn't have drained me.
Al always, you take a common thing like coffee, and bed, and make them magic!
I live that!
Bless you my friend, thank you for knowing, and understanding. And even if you didn't understand, thanks for pretending long enough for me to get it out, and then giving me needed advice.
Amd here I am, looking at these lovely words and wondering, doe this guy ever have bad day?
Bless you, I know you do, Im just playing.
You words bring smiles.
Thank you, and best wishes!
Jin
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From the possiblity of dreams, out of the cellular memories convuluted traces and on to the day of only a few paths. I would rather remember love's feast on my lips and tongue than the path taken by caffenine. ;0
Bad days, sure and sleet on the windshield smeared by wiper blades and I can't see well in the glare of lights. Getting there becomes more important than when I arrive. I have tried giving up judging and learning not to give a damn about anothers opinon. You too much involved with them and like onions, they lead to tears.
You can never enjoy what is good and rich in this life enough. The trick is finding the richness in life where you look.
Love, Tom B.
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Very nice imagery!
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Thank you
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Ah I know the words here I have been in that light, as my hair is all white/silvery...guess we all need to take time to smell the coffee an savor the flavors of life...so often we take to much for granted...novy
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Yes, age has a way of becoming silver. Wrinkles gain ground before we feel old enough to deserve them. I wanted to bring this into the light and then the captureing of the coffee from taste to how it is harvested and sold. Then at last how we become dependent on the ritual of coffee to make the morning fresh.
Love, Tom B.
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It sounds very brittle, as though you've an agreement with the work you're going to do, and you haven't much time to linger on more than a taste of the coffee.
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Ah Dorick. This once your critique fails to connect to me in a way that I can see how it works and so grow from it. Life is in the tasting, dreams grow when we savor.
Peace & Light,
Tom B. -
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Maybe, I read the other comments before commenting, but made my comment as honest as I could anyways. What makes the poem good is how quickly the words jump from image to image, but you've left room for the read to convert their own personal thoughts into the images.
I don't live much for the savoring, or the dreams, it's always been to make sure someone else enjoys their own on behalf of my service. I don't like to savor, I'll get you a glass of coffee though. -
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Been in the world of service hell.
I have learned that sharing takes time and understanding what partnering means. I am a designer and my clients are my partners. What we create comes as much from my ability to savor their needs as it does from finding answers.
Peace & Light
Tom B. -
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That sounds like understanding what they savor, not in itself enjoying what you savor. You make a good point, but in my case, to serve is to savor. I'm not working to make anyone happy, I just want to see everything improve, in whatever way that is possible.
It's strange now that I think of it, I'm never really at peace, I'm either working, or looking for more. Deep inside, I hate work, so I spend all my time trying to take it from everyone else, because that's what I would want. Perhaps I won't have the time to enjoy a moments recollection in the morning, but someone else will.
The sad part is I feel very alone in this type of thinking. Nobody wants to sacrifice their own time to savor, so they don't know what it feels like to be loved with that sacrifice.
It's turning me around, to the point where I feel sick when I'm comfortable.
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There is always something that hits the brain and makes you think about the past and how these incidents change ones life.
Juls
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This one dances with layers of meaning. How we drift into all kinds of thought as we awaken from Morpheus's dreams and find ourselves using the mundane to let us come into focus all over again.
Love, Tom B.
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That first pungent aroma of coffee always makes me close my eyes and think back on the events from yesterday or even further, perhaps its the addiction of caffeine that kicks in for the hallucinations or maybe it's the quiet moment when you have that first one that draws you backwards in time.
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I used Coffee for a larger metaphor that I think you will recognize when you think about it. I played with alot of level of thought and awareness and how we wake to them and avoid them by hiding in something else related. It is a little journey really.
Love, Tom B.
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Ah, the tastes and tangents of life, we must drink them down as surely as drink down the day, dearest poet. Perhaps a hyphen between time-worn? Your call, as ever, just a thought. " Children's chatter, the weight of debts, money and friends" had a great impact upon me. Thought provoking indeed. Well done.
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I will have to check on that American and English being different languages I wanted to capture some contrasts and thoughts here. From the very broad and philosophical to the very mundane and equally poignant to the way we let it slip past us as we return to where we feel safe. Glad you enjoyed.
Love, Tom B.
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It's amazing the associations made through scent.
Here, you touch on one both mundane and exotic.
Here, Coffee's origins recall one's own days of
youth and somewhat intoxicating power over our
own days...
But that grinds down, filters through age, and
what is left: the taste still bold upon our memory.
Elegant musings that slip into love. Blue
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I wanted to capture in the second verse the complexity of layers that exisit in the world. Then how we sidestep them to look at ourselves getting older and all of the mundane issues that clutter our day and diminish the thrust of our passion. (A friend of mine once said that the search for Nirvana required sacrifice and marriage and family were frequently one of the costs)
Your review catches onto this nicely. The world in the sip of coffee or the linger aroma love that mixes into it. Thanks for showing me that it comes through to those who know how to listen.
Love, Tom B.
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the imergary this piece portreys. i really like this. thanks for sharing
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I wanted to create a smorgasborg of flavors, thoughts and aromas to wash across the reader and carry them off on the mazy crazy morning tangents that come will still half awake and feeling the coffee hit.
Love, Tom B. -
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the aromas of making love, mingled with coffee... and even breakfast. mmmmm..... so mind blowing. it was a great way to wake up. in some ways its is possitively grant lol.
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I'm happy to know that nothing effects your writing adversely...it heightens it. Just gorgeous Tom. Thank you
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I am often nothing more than a moment waiting for an opening line. The first two came to me and when I wrote them the third completed the thought. Then I chose the subject. It fit so nicely and the words came together writing me upon the page as if I was nothing until the words showed up to tell everyone where I had been.
Love, Tom B.
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oops dang bunnies
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Oh this was just lovely.
Thanks again Tom for sharing such a piece with me.
I wish you all the best in the contest
this was a winner in my heart so if anything you won gold there.
great piece of poetry.
Passionspromise -
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Just thought you would enjoy this study of time, light, age and coffee. Everything takes its own time to ripen and we take our own time to appreciate all we have.
Love, Tom B.
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