Latte Men

I sat in the coffee shop with the lustrous business men 
punching with their lone fingertips
scratching their cell phone screens and laptops
Making importance of an early autumn's day with liberal new’s papers
And business conversation  
sucking down one latte after another
The rich viewless men full of opioids, fine collars and dress shoes
permeated hollowness like rotting tree stumps,
The latte’s made them this way

I had no love or sympathy for any man that drank lattes 
My coffee was black - full of coffee grind's, no sugar
It was left over bowels 
fetched from the coffee shop toilet bowl,
It was still warm, no microwave needed 
served in a rusted tin cup
I liked it that way 
it kept me Alive. Kept my strong, it was my life blood.
Sugared lattes made men weak, incompetent, infertile, deficient.
It's why their wives left them, and why they now they lived in apartment buildings
It’s why they only saw their children on the weekends

I played along, sucked my coffee listened to the barista’s pernicious play list
of goth fringe, new age, and rambling folk hits I was too old like, or understand. 
I watched the counter girls - along with the latte men
Talking into their headsets and smiling for tips
The baristas worked their steam machines like it was an industrial revolution 
Waging war behind the coffee bar
Their lips like North Korea, 
Poor, hungry, unstable
They worshiped Kardashian and Franklin,
their church was 80’s night 
They prayed every Sunday 
Their was no reason or rhyme for tall tilted baristas with their brunette eyes
 and spaghetti hair
latte men came out far from the edge's of town to enjoy the show 
I wasn’t a latte man, 
But I enjoyed them too. 

jcarpenterr.com