Coffee Crusade

Things can change so much only to stay the same— tomorrow is different but it’s still the same— as I stand here waiting for the 62 bus here on the corner stop across the street from a gas station. I’m gonna grab some coffee from the Barnes & Nobles cafe, as I have a gift card with a $33 remaining balance. Welcome To Paradise plays in my ears; an accurate melody, as always with Green Day, and one which I feel I’ve lived over and over now in my own way.

“It makes me wonder why I’m still here

 For some strange reason it’s now feeling like my home

 And I’m never gonna go”

But as also sung by Billie Joe on the song Jesus Of Suburbia quite poignantly that, “home is where the heart is but what a shame cause everyone’s heart doesn’t beat the same…”

On the bus now. It seems less rickety than before I left two months ago. Still free though, thankfully. I think I just saw Scott, a homeless acquaintance I used to get stoned with on breaks while working at Circle K. Looks like he had a shower recently…

[***]

The coffee expedition to Barnes & Nobles proved unsuccessful as the cafe doesn’t take the same gift card as the rest of the store. Heading back then to find a French press in the kitchen and swiping some of my brother’s bag of pre-ground Starbucks medium roast beans. Repeating the process now in the middle of the night then walking out and about again to the gas station on the corner of the main road to top it off with some French vanilla creamer and caramel syrup. In my first usage of my siblings caffeinated beans I poured in a few dashes of bourbon vanilla extract I found in the pantry, not too bad. I guess if vanilla (and almond) extract as well as creamer— caramel or hazelnut specifically— works in the creation of French toast, then by my standard does so as well in coffee. I’ve yet to be wrong and as it would happen in this I’m not either. It’s hard to fuck up coffee, how some do so I’m not sure; maybe they don’t use the occult secret of stirring the combined water and roast with a knife to cut it all out of clumps as Shane Bugbee tells me Timothy Wyllie told him. 

Coffee crusade;

Late-night, mid-day foray,

Traveling blips

sipping tasteful ichor from parched lips