Rush

[Being an excerpt from the poetry collection Not Quite the Man for the Job, on sale at Tomely for only 99c until 23 June 2014]

The cup thunks back onto the table, empty, & the bean races through your blood, bouncing off the walls of veins capillaries arteries arterioles venules entering your brain & showing those neurons & synapses what for. “Get moving, you sluggish chemo-sensitive sonsabitches! We got the power to keep you up for hours!” Neurons hesitate & pitifully protest but soon are caught up in the song of ZAP! ZOW! ZAM! & ZING!! Eyes widen pupils & nostrils dilate hair tingles limbs tremble risorial muscles tense mouth opens throat opens & WHEEEEEEEEE!! HOT DOG! YEE-FUCKEN-HA!! We’re There.

“Oh, yes,” cries the bean, “you just can’t argue with us! Born under desert skies, that ol’ goat-herder really wondered what in Allah’s name was up with his goats, didn’t he? We got them dancing & jiving & writing iambic pentameter in Russian! We got them bleating up a storm, running around like they’d just had a barb-wire enema! & when HE started chompin’ on those beans, he got such an Allah-be-damned surprise, he fell to praying & didn’t stop bobbing his head up & down for a week. We travelled the globe, stopping off in the Americas, sharing a spot next door to our cousins, the cocoas, & we got this to say to you. Have another cup, boy! Hell, have two more! We’re looking for a new home, & we picked you!

We don’t care how you have it, white, black or even with that fuzzy chocolate crap on top, just so long as you have it. Can’t you feel the strength we give you? Energy, my friend. N. R. G. Now you can go out & do whatsoever your bunny-beating little heart desires. Twice in ten minutes. Go for it boy, sprint! You’re ours now, you sonofabitch. All the way from Brazil to you. We want you to have a good time, & all we ask in return is that you HAVE. A. GOOD. TIME. Now, don’t you feel like another? Hmmmmm?”

Your quivering hands put the percolator back on the stove. You strike a match (dropping the first, but getting it the second time) & hear the satisfying thump! of igniting gas, & as your pores exude the rich, textured smell you’ve come to think of as home, the caffeine molecule goes deeper inside & bonds with DNA. Adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine & caffiene.

Witness the birth of a new being, more coffee than man.

Read more poems from Not Quite the Man for the Job – buy it now on Tomely for the mere price of 99c!