Seven poems follow about my two addictions: coffee and chocolate. The first two with art were inspired by Kathy Kearns pieces, and a third was evoked by a Susan Schneider oil painting.
 Poems on this page are
SLOW TALKER
A LATTÉ ENCOUNTER
CUP ROW
COFFEE WATERFALL
CELL PHONE CHAT
CHOCOLATE RUSH
HEART OF DARKNESS
SLOW TALKER
I tell her I didn't used to like him, but now I do. She asks why, and I say because he speaks so slowly, but that even though he hasn't changed, and I still drink as much coffee as I ever have, people don't have to talk as fast as they used to to charm me. She laughs, thinking wrongly, that I've switched to decaf.  A LATTÉ ENCOUNTER
after a Kathy Kearns Crockett Pottery cup A latté now leans on
my pillow, on purpose a pillow that echoes known patterns of wandering steam,
but soon on a thick stack of news, it will flatten its back, artifact in repose,
only half of it there, yet exposed like my need for olfactory romance with a virtual latté
I dare not call coffee, lest it scoff: "I'll call you, don't call me."  Cup Row by Kathy Kearns, Crockett Pottery
CUP ROW We’re told that they’ll probably be dug up someday, containers that hold what we now drink at our local deli, coffees, teas, lattés, Valona’s vessels, old then, maybe decayed.
Our coffee klatch, still in the pink, plans to congregate for many more Saturdays,
fun mornings to come ‘til we’re done with our sips, our occasional spats. Wound down way past decaf, we’ll be artifacts, dry toast, lined up high up with other ghost cups, a bit cracked,
vessels, all of us, ready to enter heaven's deli for one more laugh, one last nap.
For more art by Kathy Kearns, please visit her Web site at
COFFEE WATERFALL
(Ode To My Drug of Choice)
Past rocky teeth, smooth, pebbled tongue, down yawning throat, you disappear into a place I've never seen, my coffee waterfall, no cream. You splash into my gut’s great pond, a carrier of craved caffeine, ‘til thin as steam, dark roasted bean, you permeate a wondrous screen – the blood-brain barrier.
Let nothing intervene.
CELL PHONE CHAT
“Just come for a cup of coffee,” he said. “You don’t have to get dressed.”
I ate quietly, listening. “I’m trying to be nicer after last night. I’m sorry for what I did.”
New Yorker cartoons played in my head.
Thurber’s characters always wore clothes. Saul Steinberg’s? No, this voice wasn’t that sophisticated.
He quit talking. She never appeared, though naked in the coffee shop would have been nice.
Last sip of dark brew down, I left, still trying to picture her arrival, and everyone but him surprised.
 CHOCOLATE RUSH
after Susan Schneider’s Rush Ranch painting Between the Rains
A spread like this, flat but textured, is Nutella for hungry eyes and marshy tongue. It lets me imagine licking the chocolate smooth concoction off spoon or croissant. An Italian devised Nutella by fusing hazelnuts, ground fine, into a jet
of cocoa mix. Open a jar, peel back the gold foil under the lid, read the list of ingredients, and dig in. One inhalation confirms chocolate’s presence, as this oil painting affirms one aspect of Rush Ranch, an impression.
Not only do I detect the air’s aroma, its essence, but if I gambled, I’d bet a couple of bucks that you also sense its resonance with chocolate and hazelnuts.
for more art by Susan Schneider, please visit her Web site at
HEART OF DARKNESS
Standing after sundown in front of the lit fridge, I aim the brown plastic bottle of Hershey's chocolate syrup directly into my mouth. Only a drop falls on my tongue instead of the usual dark river.
I kick the fridge shut with a curse and slam the bottle on the kitchen counter. From the sink I grab a knife the moon illumines, clench its fake ivory handle, press and twist its serrated blade into the bottle's hard middle, and hack my way to more chocolate, thinking that if my mother had nursed me, I might not succumb to the horror of these atavistic oral urges.
The knife slips off the bottle to smudge the floor, and the bottle, half cut into and now sticky, demands I finish the job,
demands that I taste every smear left in its dark interior. The shadowy Kurtz in me complies. I extend and curl my index finger into this heart of darkness, unable to stop until I've licked it dry.
Third Prize, 79th Annual Poets’ Dinner, 2005, Humor Published in Issue 173, May 2005 Crockett Signal, in the 2007 Carquinez Poetry Review, and considered my signature poem by several who know me too well.
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