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 Ode to Cold Instant Coffee at Midnight

You taste
like wet driftwood ashes--
a campfire on a foreign shore
where tonight it is warm
but rainy.

Will you leave
brown lines in my cup?
Dead seaweed tide lines
down to the bottom
delimiting
each sip closer to dawn.

Once, we were both warm
and knew the leaves of trees.

Coffee, I'm so tired tonight.
Save my screen-dry eyes
and my sweet stale tongue.
Keep my ass
from a tingling death
and my fingers from feezing
on the keys.
I ask you
to be my hero
my company
my love
and to get me through
just one more night.

--Z.T., 10 Dec 1999



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