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

His feet stand like the motion of drumbeats
echoing in a harmonized acoustic as he walks proudly
in shoes manufactured with the fabric of failure.
I watch him as he dances in the freedom of bravery.
He has made himself a man by re-discovering
the definition of his heart and now he is a lead vocalist
in this band of life because he rewrote his lyrics
and his voice is now believed.

And I am a witness to these many sounds; music
of sacrifice and survival. Past pregnancies
of fear now give birth to new visions of hope. An
end of a rope leads to new beginnings hit songs
are captured everyday within the struggles
on these streets of A cappella.

This Poem is published In “A Crack In The Sidewalk” by Tarrigo T. Vaughan

Click Here to Purchase A Signed Copy Of “A Crack In The Sidewalk”

© 2010
Tarringo T. Vaughan

As he studied my attention
I refused to blink.  He told me things about my-

self I tried to keep hidden under a coffee stained
American Eagle sweat shirt
that found me on the Clearance rack.

I told him to fuck off!  But he continued
to weave his words through my intelligence.
He was such an inspired bastard; cruelty
bunched together in fifty-seven pages

of brilliance.

There was no winning against his intellectual
abuse.  So I let him have the last word.

I closed the book.

© 2010
Tarringo T. Vaughan
Beyond Rainbows & Yellow Brick Roads

No longer am i

hidden behind unmovable walls

unseen, unheard, unwanted

I busted through the plaster

and freed myself from my own

silent disaster

and now I stand exposed

no longer am i

held back by the chains of distain

undefined, unappreciated, unknown

I shattered the links of inferiority

and created my own paved

territory

and now I walk recognized

and no longer am i

tucked away under blankets of cowardice

untouched, unread, unloved

I’ve lifted fear’s suffocation

and breathed a new air

of innovation

now I am exhaled

no longer am i

afraid.

(c) 2010
Beyond Rainbows & Yellow Brick Roads

I woke up one time in the 1920’s.  A slight drool

tickled my chin as it dripped down on the current edition

of “The Crisis”.  I was a long way from home and along way

from my time as I sat at a small table off to the side

in a little Blues Café on 135^th Street in Negro Harlem.

I thought it was all just a dream but the breeze of Jazzy notes

making love to my ears brought me very alive.   I couldn’t believe my eyes

as on the walls were fancy paintings of the richest kind

of African art and surrounding me was the laughter

of faces just like mine.  Some darker, some lighter,

some beautiful and smooth and some rugged but defined.

A young gentleman around my age tapped me on the shoulder

offering me a cigar.  I politely declined

because I had a different kind of smoke on my mind;

the kind of smoke I was inhaling was a migration of some of the finest

artistic expressionists in history from the south to this place

that I woke up a part of.

A sultry voice danced its way from a small stage;

A woman of heavenly eyes and a graceful tune

massaged the atmosphere with the soft fingertips

of her vocal chords.  Bessie Smith was a woman

my grandmother idolized, and there I sat

mesmerized

in this escape into the nostalgia of a movement.

The man behind me was soon joined

by a group of gentlemen in fancy suits

with smiles tap dancing through the dimmed lights

as the shadows of day turned to night.  They were poets

because their words were lyrical and the admiration they had

towards each other rhymed in a delightful flow.

I turned around to see the pages of their faces;

Arna Botemps, Claude McCay, Countee Cullen,

James Weldon Johnson and a little known poet

named Langston Hughes.  They jived about the news,

about the War about the depression and about the way

the female poets were establishing their own expression.

I lost myself in the moment while realizing I was there with them

inside the fascination of a time defined.

It was a time where the negro became beautifully Black;

A time where the ghosts of slavery became the freedom

of self value; a time “Black” face became no longer a mask,

but a distinguished pride in the souls of these artists.  It was a time

that highlighted creativity–

and I was there.

I woke up in 2011.   A smooth morning sunlight

drooling warmly against my face.  I wasn’t in Harlem anymore

but their faces were still written in my thoughts.  Their words

inspired and influenced the soul of my muse.

I was still there,

because what happened in Harlem

has brought out the beauty of my mind.

©2011

Tarringo T. Vaughan

I am a pause stranded between the history
of tomorrow and the future of yesterday. Time
stands still. I walk with feet that travel nowhere.
Sidewalks end yet are paved by forever’s hands.

Everyone sees me; I am invisible,
no one pays attention to my silence.

The sunlight heals my absence
with its radiant glow on already darkened skin.

My mind is stuck in traffic, moving steadily
with thoughts that sing, but out of tune.

Scattered movements.

No one sees my whispers, but they glance
to hear the footsteps of my words. They turn away.

I am left alone. Time rings and I un-pause. Awakened;
I open my eyes to a dream remembered.

2011 from “A Crack In The Sidewalk”