Coffee is Everyhwere and You're Not: Starbucks at Shephards Post
BY TROY YGNACIO SORIANO I JULY 24, 2008

for Dale

If I ever ask for coffee,
imagine I am asking for love.
A man always hides a desire for love
in a search for other things.

Men who continually demand excellent service-
are the most romantic men of all.

To ask for something you want,
and then to expect to get it, is naïve and good, and just like a baby.
And so I live in a world of babies, asking mostly,
for love.

Don't approach me with something false-
don't give me the lesser version.
I can't even look at anything else,
if its not what I am thirsty for, I'll wait.
There is no substitute for what there is only one of.
There is nothing for me
in all of life, but this.

This desire
has made me
not merely good, but holy.
I will eagerly speak a foreign language,
walk far, at the start of the Day,
ask for it by its Most Specific Name,
verify it at every step,

marvel at its excellence on arrival.

I go to get coffee dressed
just as if I were
going to the Opera.
People only notice if you are not dressed well at the opera,
but if you can look that good first thing in the morning, getting a coffee-
who knows what you are really capable of?

In any weather,
an ocean Siren floats in a queer groove,
draws her twin tails around her, in an obscene gesture
as a rich smell fills the air.

I know that look.
This is no mystic vision;
she's simply had too much coffee, and then not enough.
Perfectly encircled in an orb, her need has
either entrapped her, or made her
finally too tired to move.

She doesn't exactly look serene.
Her frizzy hair defies corporate style-
tells the tale of
the many feverish nights
she spends
thinking up things to
say to me.

She needn't worry.
I have arrived at her gates
so profoundly lost, haunted, and needful-
I would not be surprised to
see my own pale and shriveled face
up there, right alongside hers.

It looks very dark behind her!
Is that the conquered night in the distance,
or has she just come to surface from a sea of French Roast?
That she is cursed and not honoured, is obvious
By the crown she wears, there is no King
and let's just say
the star it holds didn't fall there.

Forming and dissolving, she looks ultimately too New Agey to have very much to do
with the businessy types
who slowly fill up the red brick building beneath her,
across from Harvard Law School.

A green glow over four green windows
frame the rapidly changing, cubist scenes,
of her sleepy army, this modern day opium den, steam room, library-

this family of junkheads. This too faithful congregation
crowd into this new Emerald City,
and just like The Wizard of Oz,
there are long lines of people
desperate
for the coffee that might give them
a Heart, Courage, Some Brains, or a Home.

Tiny amber lamps above
little round tables arranged and re-arranged all day by
newly hatched students, eyes squinting in the daylight,
awkward with scarves and strangers to Mass. Avenue,
bubble-butt law students with skateboards
and construction workers discussing
astrology.

A smiling football player looks only too happy to
tower over everyone
in a cowboy hat and white flip-flops.
So that he is not too intimidating to flirt with,
he makes sure to carry a floppy purple yoga mat.

And it's latte, skim latte, black coffee with room, and an Orange
Mocha Valencia,
accordingly.

Don't be smug about it now but
yes, there is something heroic about getting a cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
You're out, you're up, you're dressed, you're already talking to people,
reading the newspaper,
you've accomplished something already; you got yourself a coffee!
And that thing that you've done
is a little comment on
everything after that.

I now pronounce you
Never More Officially
Awake,
Than At This Moment.
Drink more, and watch all that initiative turn into aggression.
I know to the drop how much it will take, to turn a coffeeglow
into a burnout.
Coffee can kill you if you drink enough,
but as long as young couples
go to get coffee early in the morning
evil can never win.

If they can ever get past the baby in a stroller, who is a diamond in a ring.
The stroller angles this way and that, as Mom tries to art direct
the quality of sunlight on his face!
Mom keeps turning him around and around in every direction,
and a crowd does indeed
grow.
She seems eager to be admired for loving what is easy to love;
something innocent and soft, that she just gave birth to.

What about the row of equally toothless homeless men just outside the door?
Someone should put them in a little frilly bed and roll them around to applause.

Not the blonde woman with her hair pulled so tightly back
at the center of It All.
She wears a shiny silver suit, and giggles constantly,
The attention people pay her, is mostly curiousity as to why she is laughing so much,
though no one thinks to ask her directly.

She eats a berry muffin, with chopsticks.
and talks in a loud rush, doesn't let her friend talk,
who only stares at the growing pile of crumbs like it's an oil spill.

Any conversation annoys the older man in a pink polo shirt and blue corduroys,
he shushes the oblivious crowd, over and over, shaking his white haired head.
He is trying to read a book, an activity which is not aided
by closed eyes
so that he might better pretend he is in a library
or just
anywhere else.

He frowns and frowns and rubs his chin.
His red Harvard baseball cap
is his crown.
His overstuffed green chair
is his throne.
He looks around lost, frowning down endlessly, then up and around
in any direction.
He can't quite believe his life is turning out to be
mostly this.
How did it happen? How has this huge crowd of people come together
and he has no peace, nor even someone to talk to?
Of course he has someone to talk to,
there are people all around him.
he has no skill for how to do it.
One day soon he will stand up and make a single, clarion pronouncement;
it will be: QUIET!

In this living room in which everything is for sale-
even the paint on the wall,
there are more secret agendas than in any nightclub.
Oh, there are no boys and girls clubs now, no gay bars, Club Meds, speakeasies, lounges,
cyber-cafés, no arcades, bookstores, nursing homes or day care centers
there's just three hundred thousand of these.

An old man gives a business presentation, to an even older man.
A middle aged woman signs many contracts giddily, in sweatpants,
she is
not reading
the fine print.
A publisher and an author, cruising each other,
need to get a room.
A gay couple secure a long engagement by
not saying a word.

A man with more both more money and charm than anyone else
devours everything with his eyes
he's a
horse galloping.
He spots a dime on the floor
and picking it up with a smile, says "the rich
get richer".

I love that he
says everything twice,
I love that he
calls every man
My Dear, or
Good Man.
Hello hello, what's this, what's this, right, right, I see, I see.

He is only barely with a woman who
doesn't speak to any of the other women, and is careful to refer to every man as You Dog,
always with a laugh.

Their cloud of fine manners is only disrupted by
He Whose Birthday Suit Could Have Only Been
Wool Pinstripes.
No. He will not share his table. He doesn't care if he's not drinking a coffee, and only
reading, he will not share a
table. He is not charmed in the least by you saying
everything twice. No,
he doesn't think much of sharing,
or how vital a concept it is in a world which is shrinking,
yes he does need two tables pushed together
and four chairs for
purposes and friends
not yet
realized.

The dejected couple saunter away
talking to all of us aloud, which is something about
how a change in behavior eventually produces
a change in personality, a change in the world, and so on very interesting.

For a long time, all I'm hearing are many different versions of "can I help who's next"
and no one ever responds to this question
no matter how it is phrased
or how loudly.

This is just one big room in which people can
be alone in!
And clearly
some people have become
too comfortable here,
wander into the wrong corner
you might not be surprised to see them
sitting on the toilet,
hanging laundry on the line,
or building a little fire.

See, you're not just finding a place to sit,
you are
interrupting
their life
how dare you.

The real wizard of this Modern Day Oz is a woman,
a young and beautiful woman
she is not a robot
she does have a name,
and Ah how can it be anything other than Joy, oh that is so perfect,
she is only on break
from an Ivy League school and

irrespective of that
is much
smarter than you and
can and will change your milk preference from Skim to Half and Half and back again
at her very own lovely whim, so treat her with the most respect and kindness. However
feel free to stick your head
behind her whizzing popping shrieking machine, and ask "What kind of coffee
would a Buddhist drink?", with a wink.

It's a question to ask, even if it's almost Christmas.
This place can't close today, didn't you hear? Coffee is now an official public service,
like running water, like electricity!
And besides where would the people wear their new clothes, have their
fashion shows now?
All the worlds a runway?
No, not the world, only this sixty foot long room, and you are Front Row for
quite a procession of
cordovan shoes, shorts in any weather, smart black wool pants, college t-shirts, bits of
crimson things you never quite get, rubber bracelets declaiming causes you can never
read, have heard of, or understand.
It's all just
highlighted hair as far as the eye can see.
Who wears a cape anymore! It's certainly an odd thing to see but why not?

I'm not sure a velvet jacket is what my life is missing, I think, as it dawns on me that
I've probably had too much coffee.

Life is just a furious glee, isn't it?
Can you do two things at the same time, can you do four?
Oh look at that
you can,
you can!

Caffeine overdose is not that unusual anymore the nurse told me, last time.

Figure out how to figure it out!
Don't design you own problems!
The day is completely manageable! Life is
just a little handmade sweater, after all.

When I woke up that morning-
all I was thinking about was Love;
a steam wand

slowly sweetening the coldest milk, and the boiling over,
carefully timed.
How long can I be expected to last
if an espresso shot is ruined if untouched,
for even ten seconds?
How long a line there is for it! And what it will cost me!

I double screen everything I will say now, I'll have
hardly any time at all
to get it
absolutely perfect.

But instead of saying:

"Love is all I need, to wake up."

I say:

"A doppio con panna",

cheerlessly:

"to go."

With that,
I'm in motion, and
suddenly I think of the painter Paul Cadmus.
How much he would have enjoyed this sweaty little scene,
this coffee shop that
wants to marry me.

And I would.
But it's complicated,
requires an oath of allegiance to
Arabian Mocha Sanani, complete conversion to Columbia Nariño Supremo,
and the orchestration of a break-out, for Joy.
And don't forget

Ryan Holohan, who turns to me as I leave, not so much saying Goodbye
as beaming it,
a Goodbye which somehow
actually improves my soul.
He is
the endlessly smiling, golden Barista

who prefers
and really deserves
to be at home painting and
giving massage therapy.
He smiles so brightly considering
it's twenty seven years,
four months, three days
and seven hours
of him not yet being famous.

I ask him
what to write in my poem
and
he whispers many elegant ideas in my ear, as
cell phones flip open all around me
like so many compacts full of face powder,
And the many different sized hopes
That something inside
what you are holding
in front of your face
will soon make you
quite loved.

 

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