Black & White coffee (for Olga!)

In that great scramble
eagerly and always
to please
don't forget to carry yourself forward
as more than a running total
on a Prufrockian balance sheet
sprinkled ...

Comic Version of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

thinned ...

Image result for j alfred prufrock eliot

and pinned ...

remembering no matter how many coffee spoons are used
to measure and to stir
careless of past dips and equally liable to mounding or leveling
but not to rounding error
whether given to dry or liquid measure
(because milk and sugar or cream and sugar are surely greater and more wholesome
than Coffee Mate
but for all that are still sweeteners
and smooth the flavour
the way that old ad promised

for coffee enjoyed
not au lait or milchkaffee
but de rigueur
Black & White)

oh, sure
like an Italian for whom
a cup of coffee is not very nice
especially when he is naturalized in Aberdeen
where a cup of tea would be more polite
yet Tony yea once a publican and then a guest house keeper to boot
told me so when you take a coffee
you must first correct it
not by an apt choice of a mug
but by the admixture of espresso and brandy corretto
for that is a caffe corretto
worthy of much better than a sip

You Should Be Drinking Coffee Like the Italians

and while we're at it
let's not forget the Irish
who have ever competed with the Italians
for kaffeeklatsch
especially when it clashed
with the expectation
pre mass
of breaking fast
with whiskey and whipped cream
served tall in a glass.

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