Coffee Shop Flyers
I think I’ll have a caramel toffee mocha.
“tall, Grande, or venti?”
I could tell she’s been working at Starbucks
for awhile. A fake shine of happiness
on a Saturday morning with a line of customers
already with their minds made up just waiting…just waiting
for a workaholic poet to make up his mind.
The choices in size always perplexed me. Tall is really small,
Grande is actually not that large at all
and Venti is the classic twenty ounces of caffeine
we crave on days like this. As I looked at the shadows
behind me exploding with impatience
I knew what I wanted the whole time,
I just wanted to prolong the wait of predictable
fate.
I’ll go with the Venti.
And what I mean by the fate line is that we expose
ourselves daily to opportunities of change
with life being all about the situations
uncontrolled by the nuances of time management.
My extra minutes of decision was changing
the pace of someone’s path. Okay maybe too much
thinking here or an excuse for not having my mind
made up before ordering.
Not that they give you much time
to decide. But like the ‘sighs’ and rolled eyes
of impatience behind me, I was supposed
to know what I wanted.
“Here’s your change sir”
I was feeling lucky so I threw the two dimes
and four pennies in the little tip cup and waited
by the bulletin board pretending to be interested
in the flyers perfectly placed in a mess
for the eyes to weed through or did I mean ‘read’?.
Hot Body Contest
It took a minute for my thoughts to congest/
the idea of people even judging other people
on something that depends on the perception of the eye.
The winner is always the person exhibiting the most “I”.
Annual Art Festival On Mattoon Street
But then again it’s always great when people
have a place to showcase the talent of the mind.
And as this poster reached for my attention,
I was reminded of my own fate as I had my own
artistry to relate. But then again who would really
be interested in thoughtful poetry?
“Venti caramel toffee mocha!”
It’s been awhile since I had a nice photograph taken of me
A small card on the corner of the board
made me reach and move over the AIDS walk poster
just a bit. And I wasn’t ignoring the content and value
of the poster, I just wanted to get the name of the photographer;
a name that escaped me as soon as I heard
“Venti caramel toffee mocha”.
If I wasn’t so distracted the coffee shop flyers
maybe I would’ve heard it the first time.
Oh sorry!
Shit. I felt like such an annoyance.
But hey, such is fate.
from “A Crack In The Sidewalk” – A Collection of poetry from Tarringo T. Vaughan
Purshase: Amazon Kindle
