अंकल अल TwentyFour

Coffee and Cigarettes

The dawn's sun cuts through my window slowly
It's rays turn harsh, cutting like plasma
Crawling across the beaten faded table like a dream
Steam rises from another bitter cup of java
Cut with sugar into a sweet and sour dance
A dance for the senses
A dance for a solitary morning
A dance I watch from a distance

Smoke swirls in ghostly gray tendrils
Spinning like a carnival ride at the county fair
Movement, mysterious like a dusty side show
It's wisps of smoke carve side show freaks in the air
The sun's white heat and blinding light accentuate
Accentuate the dance of ghosts

I carve words upon a sea of dirty pulp
Paper whose emptiness of tarnished voids
Cries out for a fulfillment of thought
Thoughts that scream in my head like sirens
Sirens that bring about tragic ends
Ends to life, ends to dreams
Ashes into dust
Ashes into dust

I carve words like phantom shadows upon the wall
Shadows that come with the passing sun
The passing of days, into night
Into night
I watch my pen tear upon the void's surface
Like a farmer tilling raw soil
I watch as thoughts turn to stone
Stone carved out by someone else's wisdom
Not mine
No wise words at this train stop
Nothing but naked page and raging pen

I draw in the savage smoke, spinning within the air
Exhale the emptiness
Exhale the pain
Smoke dances madly across a blanket of light
A bed of warmth on which to lay my head
Lay my thoughts in a crown of rusting thorns
I watch the smoke waft into lost horizons
A magic show of pictographs and shadows
Shadows of ancient tradition spread like water
That overflows the gutters after a long hard storm
Waters of uncertainty that lay claim to me
Within their hands of judgment
I stand corrupted
I stand naked in sin

The morning's light now fills the room
Like the hand of a God savage and sweet
Harsh and swift like a roll of the dice
I wait for the warmth that comes with the light
To envelope me in it's haze
My cigarette burns, it's smoke swirls
Towards the passing light
My coffee lies sullenly still
Like calm waters before the storm
I watch like the watcher
Portrait of a still life carved from a life
A life less ordinary
A life of coffee and cigarettes