Java

We're at the cafe chewing the fat out of Poetics. We're

drinking exotic java from Sumatra's steamy mountains with

jiggerfuls of Bailey's Cream. We're going to tear down

 

the Lyceum tonight and wake in the bushes tomorrow with

aftershocks still crackling in our heads. We're guzzling more

of this oily, liquid explosive and ranting about Aristotle,

 

the cantankerous old duck he became when he left Athens for

the boy king of Macedonia. Mist rises from our fevered brains,

obscuring the room and the jazz and the rhapsodies we take turns

 

reciting. I am having an out of body experience, my eyes

so full of blue light and wistfulness I can feel the reverb

of my words, the syllables lining up in their linear rows,

 

bumping into each other as they slinky forward, end over

slurpy end. Nature chooses the proper meter, Aristotle says

through Bramdass' voice, and I'm agreeing and flogging my

 

tongue about for emphasis, becoming more profound as I kick

off my wing tips and begin to levitate. We're dealing out

our full deck of vocabulary words now, two high rollers,

 

two java worshipers approaching our frenzied peaks, our

Machu Picchuan summit. One or two well chosen handholds

and we can haul ourselves onto the lowest rungs of heaven. We

 

are astonished by our radioactive brilliance, Bramdass fallen to

his knees, fallen flat in his green ravine of shag carpet, joy

spilling from his eyes, the heady drunken joy of misfits.

 

--Miguel deO

 

Done