Frederick Kwesi Great Agboletey

Scotland, Glasgow

Pass the coffee mug, a pot of tea ...

Coffee kicked me pretty bad

Worked me to pitch high excitement

With no let off zone inbuilt

Jumbled my mind

Shoke my hands somewhat terribly

Unsteady, it made me

Brown juice of barely controlled excitement-

So I shifted over to tea

Mellowed taste

Of fruit blossoming

Working its taste in flattened tones-

Four by four

In two blends

Four bags by four pots

Bags stocked in those famed big blue jars-

Till, in mellowed composition of discomposed serenity

I sit down to laugh that satiated low-pitched laugh

Of joy rediscovered

In outer regions of subdued mind

Spun out and inward turned-

Now inspired on the brown

Deprived of serenity

Starving off hunger of sleep

I set pen to paper

And composed an 'elegy' to coffee

Over a pot of steaming tea-

Coffee inspired me,

Tugged and pulled

Raised me all up

Turgid and unrelenting

All this energy has to be released one way or another-

Tea gave me mild “resonemang”

Discursive awareness

Of ancient wisdom

Subdued contemplative restlessness of inspired insight

To perceive momentarily through blackened glass of ignorance

Where light of wisdom flares

Emerging one bright morning

In sunny height of perfect summer

In a year I stopped caring-

Tea mellows exuberant energy and gives it directive expression

None of that aggressive macho abrasiveness

Of one shot over laden coffee

With its tempting aroma intoxicating

Like subtle joy of sunny morning sprung ahead of day’s light-

Old tea seeping through my sepia coloured handkerchief

Smells like old sweat

It has a slick of mellowed tenderness

Unlike that biting dry and cut smack

Of straight black coffee

That flavoured my subdued aggression

Spiking it one level up-

Coffee is for brassy hard knuckled

Aggressive moustachioed men

In blue overalls,

Untamed ravenous wolves

In pinstriped suits

Padding on wolverine toes

Down quiet long dark corridors

In subdued lightning

Of buildings so claustrophobic

 Not all elevated rooms in tiered world

Will bring that inner peace, so much sought-

Old coffee addicts

In clinical old people’s home

Forget just about anything

But not coffee,

Coffee is akin to cola juice

 That keeps those old hearts

a-pumping

Somethings you just can't let go-

Coffee is drank by tough women

With lips so tight they can only sip,

Tea you must slurp, sugging a slug of comforting mouthful

Its meant for full soft lipped

None of that Amazonian ‘gangsterism’,

Tea is for enlightened noble

Coffee, on the other hand, for rapacious adventurers

Red pepper chewing lions with fiery, curly beards

Breathing out fire-

You’ve got to have intestines lined with iron

To sustain that dark horse habit

Of drinking black coffee, no milk no sugar, straight,

Sure, some people are a cut above middling normal

Yet, don’t  just jump into fast flowing streams,

After all, not everyone was born to be a pirate-

Coffee is for all muscled, jacked-up men,

Tough skinned women with straight black hair

Iced, laced ‘blondies’

With icy background

Too weak to try anything stronger

Too straight to experiment with anything milder

Cigarette smoking junkies

With one doughnut to go with-

Tough guys with a centre of marshmallow

Toasted and not overdone

Snuffers, with tobacco drenched mentality-dripping saliva

Taste buds dead

Haters of garlic and all that

They love coffee-

Bad dreamers

Bad trippers

Long-term coffee junkies

In civilised setting

Cappuccino moochers

”Mocka” addicts

Strong coffee lovers

Sleep deprived-

Warp driven

Zinged into space

Motor burnings at full thrust,

Irreversible combustion

This coffee loaded fraternity;

Sororities of controlled angst

Overworked, over driven, overburdened

Guilt laden

Red eyed, coffee, cookie monsters-

Ravaging midnight closet

Restless lot, scurrying noises at midnight

Beans, ground, natural, toasted,

Temperature controlled toast

Ice packed, vacuum packed

Caffeinated, decaffeinated,

Very best, Brazilian, Kenyan,

West African, no less, only ancient recipes

All that and more

You label of restless fervour-

Drenched minds with sharp sticks

Holding sagging eyelids

Hooked to a life system of coffee cups

Double-plated coffee brewers, camp cooked

Thick, black, syrupy, tarmac blend

Coffee aficionados don’t use milk-

Coffee is to Indiana Jones

As tea is to Mahatma Gandhi

The ‘taliban’ don’t drink tea

They don’t drink tequila either,

The ‘mujahedin’ they drink tea

The ‘ruskies’, they drink coffee

Cola chewers don’t drink tea

Cowboys don’t drink tea

Truck drivers and bikers

they don’t drink tea-

What is it with coffee and coca-cola?

Tea drinkers drink Pepsi-cola

And sprite for that matter-

Tough firemen

Abrasive policemen

Overworked detectives

Hardened private eyes

TV men and anchor women

Double-shift medical people

They all drink coffee-

My grandmother drinks tea,

So do all those nice old English women with crooked noses

All overweight Dutchmen settle for tea

The Swedes don’t drink tea

I don’t think the Finnish do either

Tea drinkers don’t have serious conversation about tea drinking

Though a world of trade revolved a round these dried weeds

I beg your pardon, weeds?

And what do Rasta men drink when their roasted throats

Need to be slackened?

Now that is an academic question

The Spanish never awakened from their first love affair with coffee

Neither did the Italians

Don’t ask me about Sicilians-

The French, they have cultivated taste

They probably cream it,

Americans are not discriminating

They are too busy building a continent and a world

Leave all that ebony and ivory stuff to dawdling poets-

Coffee has deceptive seeming mild kick of a rogue camel

Tea, it has gentle, soft feel of a merino sheep

Coffee has no mercy

Tea is forgiving,

You can’t mix coffee with anything that’s gentle

Tea you can mistake for wine

If you are twisted enough

To stoop to that depth of self-denial-

Tea has refined taste flavoured by a thousand fruits

Coffee on  other hand is aromatic, bold, self defining, expressively rude-

They had that big tea party at Boston harbour

When differing two sides of those English men of yore

Couldn’t stand each other any longer

Wonder if there have been a few coffee wars?

What do soldiers drink?

Definitely not tea-

Cocainised coffee is a double spiral

Of improbabilities-

Coffee is romantic

Coffee is adventure

Coffee is racy

Coffee is slick

Aluminium counters

Polished wood’

Cigars and whisky

So is everything that has offended mild weak-

Tea is for meditating religious

Spiritually meek and humble,

Afflicted caffeine deprived resort to tea as a last resort

They chew Kat instead,

There are coffee bars

And then

Tea parlours-

These two brownies,

One of weeds and other of beans

They are worlds apart

You can’t be a cat lover and a dog lover

Only if you a “vet”

Then of course you love nothing

You must be impartial,

Truly non-discriminating

They are coffee people-

Where do frenzied dishonest get their high from?

When they pretend they are a-okay?

Just wondering

Definitely not tea,

Its not got that kick to free self deception,

A repressed conscious is a hard thing to loosen-

Happy and gay men

Filled with vague ambition

Only a college student ought to have and cherish

Cannot be intoxicated on tea

When they’ve been up

All-Night plugging holes in-between their brains-

There is something shifty about red-eyed coffee

Driving all night long

Down highway 66

What with crab catchers and smugglers in between those swamps

And they haven’t been slurping tea either

In-between restroom and gas stations,

There must be something the problem

When steady headed, good girls

Waitresses and steady headed factory girls

Are suspicious of industrial brewed coffee-

Coffee has dark links with shady vast industrial conspiracy

Of multinationals and globalisation advocates

That makes conspiracy theorists with cracked coffee pots

Fully somnolent after 48 hour stretches on far edges of wide world web

Ablog-ing and all that, serving and saving world

Gorging themselves on excesses of information overload

Half marooned in morass of coffee bean-

Tea is idealistic industrial

Brown toned women in coloured garbs

Daintily plucking green leaves in some far off

Asian agro-traditional paradisiacal world

Where fantasy can still be weaved in white washed bungalows-

Tea is an art form

Coffee is all brown earth

Back breaking labour

No colourful image of colonial idealism

Portraying white coated gentlemen

And light summer umbrella twiddling ladies-

Tea is Kashmir

Coffee is Calcutta

Tea is definitely not Chicago

New York is too racy

Moscow? Vodka and tea? Bad company

Beijing is no longer reliable tea,

What with that multinational coffee monger

The one that attracted all recurring bad press in Seattle

You know, yeah, that one, now you know-

Wondered what they drank

When building the Great Wall?

Hoover dam, Golden Gate Bridge

Akosombo dam, the Alexandria Library

And those miners in South Africa

What comes before after task beer? -

Jailhouse rock was not composed

By moon shining over tea leaves

Telling fortunes in tealeaves requires intelligence

To carry a lie with a straight face

Coffee makes nervous face muscles twitch

from nerves in induced hyper drive-

When those young med students become hallucinatory

Couldn’t be tea, could it?

Coffee may not bear this world’s burdens

But it certainly does build our world

And some more,

‘The fault dear fellows, is not in the beans

It is in the brew’

And my case is not rested

What with all these caffeine

Swirling all round my brain-

This secret romance of brown juices

Cola juice, mulched and tossed around

Spat out and swallowed and re-swallowed

Bitter like very coloquintida

Bitter, bitter, bitter, so bitter it is sweet-

Saucy caster of aspersion

Golden hazed nut

Riving everyone nuts

How else will a mind half frozen

Keep awake when exhausted body shuts down? –

That other addiction

Which everyone chooses to ignore,

What a powerful allure you possess,

Even academics have been ‘junkied’ by your crave,

They crave for you-

You dig in and request to be tanked-up

You have offered comic relief

Relief from self

And kept drowsy world awake

You sweet smelling deception-

Pass aged social tankard

With its iron edged-smock-iness

And fill up my teacup

White china

Three-thirds full, mark you

And not more

I am a tea drinker

There ain’t nothing like bad tea

Three days old and stale like yesterday’s beer

That’s coffee.

…Will do just fine.