Poetry Friday: The Word is COFFEE

Unending thanks to the wonderful and talented Mother of Invention for the word this week. It’s warm, and wonderful, and stimulating. It’s COFFEE. I’m sipping my second cup right now, it’s 6:40 a.m., and I’m hearing my co-workers bang sleepy doors and shuffle through white noise to their cubes, to the coffee machine, to a Friday morning.

Please feel free to stir this word into your blog post today, however it opens your teeny-tiny container of half-and-half…poem, story, photo, musical interlude, bare-assed dance in the snow….

Coffee to me conjures up songs. And movies. And remembering.

Have a Good Weekend, y’all!


Mona Ponders Coffee

1) When I was a child, I loved coffee candy…those hard tan disks that melt slowly in your mouth. My parents hoped I’d hate them. They were sure I would. But the milky smooth bite of them was sinful and delicious, and who was I to say no?

2) Growing up, we had a percolator, which was only used for post-funeral suppers. My folks, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, always used instant coffee. Aunt D and Uncle T always drank their instant coffee with glops of sweetened condensed milk, and three spoonsful of sugar. Even though I’ve grown a bit coffee-snobbish over the years, I find a certain charm in a cup of instant coffee. My childhood sitting there in inky swirls, sweetened with Splenda, and half-and-half.

3) Nothing goes better with coffee than dessert. Especially pie. If I could eat pie and drink coffee at every meal, and not have it expand my backside to enormous proportions, I’d do it. Every. Day.

4) Back in the early 80s, I discovered the band Squeeze. I fell for them hard. Lead singer Glenn Tilbrook was and always will be a Secret Fantasy Boyfriend. I saw them in concert five, or six, or seven times. I’ve lost track. When Mother of Invention offered up the word coffee, I immediately heard Glenn’s voice calling out to me. Oh, to be making coffee stains in his notebook….

5) Jim Jarmusch has always been a favourite filmmaker of mine. A few years ago he came out with “Coffee and Cigarettes”. Loved it. This is one of my favorite scenes…Iggy Pop and Tom Waits meet for coffee.

6) I love Otis Redding. The first album of his I got was one of those ‘Best Of’ compilations, and I remember sitting in my living room, stunned, at his voice and his passion. Whenever I’m up really late, like REEEEALLY late, his song “Cigarettes and Coffee” immediately comes to mind.

7) Target sells little jars of chocolate-covered espresso beans. I. Am. Addicted.