The Lonely Latte

Dusk descended beneath the lightness of dawn.

The oat veil could not drive out the crepuscule of his life,

But instead, shrouded his distorted strife.

A dirty chai,

At night might cry,

For redemption,

Release,

From the past to peace.

For the dirt contaminates that pure

Ancient drink,

Bringing guilt’s gravity –

That can make any man sink,

Below the virtuous infused cloak,

Where heroin sings to evoke

Cruelty

Against oneself…

Whose story will lie on a stranger’s bookshelf;

(Shantaram).

“Diazepam” –

The GP prescribes for negligible anxiety.

Yet, who is he –

Who engaged in depraved brutality?

The man who contributed to a civil catastrophe.

If pardoned, will he ever walk free

Or even simply,

Just be?

NO.

Not quite.

For he cannot rid himself of past’s plight.

Yet, as he waits in Tippi

For life's continuous call to move,

An innocuous latte might just prove

That love can prevail

And demons departing will set a-sail

Upon the River Styx;

Immortal but cast away -

Unable to scream sombre songs

Upon this golden-hued day.

Cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon

Kiss his softening lips –

Wrapping him a frothy, vanilla shawl,

Whilst dusk descends and night prepares to fall.

As he sips on Masala Chai,

Gingerbread men dance in distant dreams,

Glittering before hearth-browns

And familiar, homely sounds.

Sepia moments

And sweet memories,

Summon spices and spirits

From yesteryears,

And his hardened eyes fill with vulnerable tears.

Thelonious Monk echoes within the crevasses of time

Of elapsed emotions and absent empathy -

Filling his void with the soul of blues,

Where indigo and azure paint a cerebral bruise

Upon the pinched instrument

That is his frame –

Possessed by Hellbanianz for their

Futile war game

In

Cocaine.

Stars and planets pirouette around

Smouldering nutmeg,

Which glitters in the glimmer of

Gratitude.

Philodendron Micans cascade velvet of

Sea green and maroon -

Adorning Tippi Café,

That chairs his dirty chai on a slate tea tray.

It is

Grey.

Like his soul yesterday.

But today,

Is Friday, 23 September 2022.

Autumn’s debut.

The green leaves of summer

Are now pressed into matcha.

Their earthen bones shattered by a pestle.

Their silent soul whirled by a whisk;

Create the portrait of his odalisque,

Dorentina.

Her name derived from an Albanian writer –

Also known as 'The Ghost Rider'.

He was her only provider

And submerged her life in heroin and tainted

Cider.

Summer leaves were wasted,

Matcha suspended.

He never blended

Pureness with the perturbed;

The whole from the shattered.

Thus, his soul remained scattered –

In fragments of regret,

Of which he cannot offset –

Like the effulgence

Of carbon-infused incense.

“Lilleys or Jacks, a pint please?”

He asks with the aim to appease

His guilt,

That shrouds him in molten silt.

The dirty chai has become

A lie -

A euphemism

For his addiction to drink;

Noon’s façade

That allows him to finally think.

In these moments he believes that he cannot sink.

The ochre daubed girl

And her obsidian Doberman,

Mock his mendacity,

Passively.

They Laugh at his glaring pugnacity –

Tragically,

Yet, magically.

The spellbinding charm of pity,

Patience,

And Panic,

Enables the waitress to

Suppress her grimacing facial nerve,

And serve

A double espresso,

To this hunched crow

Embossed

In Van Gogh’s

Dead-ended wheatfield.

Her pleasantries forge an illusory shield

In her world of instinctive servitude.

His delude;

A customer’s gratitude.

Both feel devalued.

Together,

They are actors in lives they could not foresee,

Amongst political uncertainty.

A criminal and a refugee;

Bureaucratic debris.

She returns home to Shiraz and The Midnight Library,

He to the parallel pub and a culinary

Sight

Of fat (indulgence),

Which, is only palpable to the famished poor,

For any transaction is an act of grandeur.

Oil caped calamari ,

And a sip on San Miguel

Saturate his sleeping soul;

Subdued by mandatory parole.

She has serenity in her asylum

And status –

Of blamelessness.

Meanwhile, he wallows in his former voraciousness

For capital,

For a life

Better than the one before,

For which his disabled mother was subjected to endure.

For twenty-seven years.

She eventually drowned

In a river of tormented tears.

Hugging hands -

Separated by drawn frontiers.

Recollections of courtship coffee in Tirana,

Consumed his soul as though a starving Piranha

Was chewing at his un-ironed flesh -

In a murderous trawling mesh.

Oak chameleons cascade down white-washed walls,

Summoning this fool

Who dreams -

Of other lands and wistful paths,

Where lullabies echo the laughs

Of lost loved ones.

Laurel dances here,

In this green recycled sphere.

Blue angelfish swim in saffron lattes,

Plunging into pools of

Colombian coffee;

Ancient arabica.

Per capita

Is measured in profitless

Consciousness.

She looks up into his fracked face;

Of pipelines transporting

Rivers of regret,

Streams of sorrow,

Lakes of latent defects –

For which he is obliged to disclose,

As the Seller of his soul,

To the buyer of his body.

Forty pence for a stabbing of syrup.

Hazelnut.

No sin to reconcile;

A lotus flower

Adrift the River Nile –

Conveyancing complete.

“A pound of flesh” –

A macabre receipt.

The earthy abyss of caffeine –

The blissful bitter blanket,

Shrouds his quivering veins

From remains

Of tourmaline pains.

He is the lonely latte.

Twilight charms routine romance with

The lonely lager.

For at the turn of Six PM

His body becomes

A brewed dog –

Passing the threshold of

His life’s prologue.

Four chapters in,

An established prose of passing sin.

Another sloe(w) gin.

One more self-pitying violin –

Playing in the shadows of Scott Tixier

As he falls tipsier,

Tonight.

The hoppy hints of Denver,

Dress his fracked frame in the

Movements of Allen Ginsberg

Who warms:

‘Don’t follow my path to extinction.’

‘Don’t hide the madness;’

The badness

And sadness.

Howl instead.

Howl, howl, howl.

Howl again in eternal time,

And whisper goodbye to

The unavoidable war crime

Of life in the Western World,

Where people are bought and sold –

Turned into Fool’s Gold.

Money over mind

Can bind,

One to contractual blame –

Enough for a valid claim

For self-defamation.

No frustration.

Western corruption is a natural event.

An innocent descent

Into

‘The Heart of Darkness’

Of colonialism

And historic fascism,

Which grasped Albania -

Creating a necromania;

A morbid mind

Buried in masala chai.

What is it for a woman to die?

Who is the trafficked girl?

Who is the refugee waitress?

Who is the anonymous soul

In Denver’s 2021 sink hole –

Swallowing a Cop’s car,

Suffocating in Ester’s bell jar?

"Therefore hear this, you afflicted one,

made drunk, but not with wine -

[Poisoning your bloodline].

I have taken out of your hand

the cup that made you stagger”.

Yet,

"Awake! Awake!" and "Put on strength!"

Called Isaiah

With evident satire,

From beyond Satan’s red fire.

Ridiculing this protagonist’s vice,

Is simply suffice

To drag him from the internal inferno,

Of which he now resides

And hides –

Seeking the inessentiality of his victims

To find amnesty within oneself.

The vice off coffee and

Pure transgression

Hides this person’s deep depression;

An obsession

In seeking a meaning in this

Inconsequential life -

Filled with human strife.

Discarded from love.

Accepted by evil –

A supposed retrieval

From non-existence.

Yet, tomorrow is a day for atonement –

A moment

For compassion;

A chance to re-fashion…

Oneself.

Be sorry

And be kind.

Do not feel consigned

To a past life of malice,

For Earth can be a harmonious palace –

Of which we as artists

Paint

And acquaint -

As friends or foe,

Until the sun’s glow

Fades,

And we become etched

In the frames of History.