Birth.

On this day - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - this blog was born at a Starbucks in Chicago, IL. While probably not the first hideous creature born on a Starbucks love seat, it is probably the first with enough ambition to rise above its humble beginnings and grow into a truly great terror. Watch out, all of you brain-dead buffoons, carting your crapbook up to your local caffeine dispensary and violently smashing away at your keyboard, preserving some trivial anti-thoughts in the vast Google server farm while slurping down sub-par, sugar-drenched espresso concoctions. There's a new kid in the blogosphere, born in the belly of the beast itself, and we're here to fuck shit up.

In honor of this, here's one of my old poems, also written in a coffee shop:

"Junky"
I wish I could tell you I came here
just to fool some misunderstood intellectuals
into thinking that my discourses on one classic modernist or another are profound,
or to seduce some eager young hipster
with a pierced tongue and a tattoo of a lotus flower.
I'd give her a canned discussion of my adventures
gallivanting across the West like Jack Kerouac
(She's heard of him).
But my intentions are much darker.
A bold roast of my soul
is taking place in the most delicious circle of hell.
I need my fix, and right now
just the thought of that Colombian candy
is making my cold, blue veins expand.
I enter, and already feel the assault
of ringing steel strings, voices
with voracious appetites for casual conversation.
And the smells!
The olfactory roller-coaster runs right off the rails
and into my face.
I slam a greasy fin in front of the cute girl at the counter,
but I pay her fearful eyes no mind,
turning my gaze to the Melita filters that purify
my little satori.
"Blend no. 91, venti. Make it black."
I can feel the eyes around me
pounding like a prizefighter’s glove.
I imagine them staring straight through my skin,
into my shriveled, thirsty organs.
I nervously tongue the little steel hoop in my lips
that I had installed to remain invisible.
Salvation comes in the form of
"Sir, your coffee is ready."
I nearly spill the blistering beverage all over myself,
(probably dying tragically of 3rd degree burns,
and prompting a Dateline special investigation
of my particular problem rising in our youth)
but I manage to park myself safely,
on the nearest leather sofa.
For a moment, I just stare.
This 20 ounce void before me is asking
the same existential questions the astronaut is asked
facing the abyss.
I wonder what Gary Snyder would tell me
about how the Buddhists perceive coffee?
The first sip is pain.
The stinging bite of a black, South American serpent
curled up in a cartoon-orange dish.
The second is reminiscence.
It comes on bitter, and turns
to sweet poison tickling the taste buds.
That familiarity conjures pleasant dreams,
and swollen desire conquers.
The third is emptiness.
All of my five senses float from me like steam.
Time's hare becomes the tortoise,
faces blur, and droning guitar chords mark the fade to black.
The fourth is resurrection.
My heart beats harder, servant under the whip
of a dried-out sponge brain,
and my tin man joints begin to reactivate,
nourished by the oil.
And sound, sight, smell, taste and touch!
They return with such clarity!
Everything fresh,
I am reborn in the
room now vibrating with hidden energies
brewed of my purest imagination!
New scalding force of thought flowing so vigorously
causing me to believe
I am Atlas with pale bony shoulders
holding up the world from dull sleepy decay
of the pencil pusher's dreams.
O sweet obsidian chaos searing a hole through my skull
and pouring a pot of glorious false transcendence into
my brain!
When, I pray! When!
When will I be released of caffiendish ecstasy?
The tingling in my fingertips is too much to bear,
and to speak of it burns my gentle tongue...
Yet I press on, and
with the fifth sip
comes holy acceptance.
All stress and all desire simultaneously dissipate,
giving way to serenity.

- SL