Solipsistic

I am a caffeine junky

that sits alone

at the patio of a café, 

in a silence occasionally broken

by the writhing and spasmodic fit

of a body that wants to

jump and shout in a way

familiar with Methodists

and snake-handling Christians.

On my second cup,

I am sipping it gently,

uttering to myself,

“I like my coffee like I like my women—nerve-fraying.”

(My nerves are starting to resemble

the cuffs of my well-worn blazer.)

On my third cup,

the sips are more frequent;

the hands, more jittery.

I start to think about time,

how it passes people by,

how the hours overlap the minutes,

leaving the seconds behind to eat dust.

A fourth cup beckons me,

but the mind is in overdrive,

going at a million thoughts per minute,

thoughts that are jagged, disjointed—

a stream of consciousness

barely contained by puckered lips

and self-awareness.

Fidgeting, I reach for a cigarette

with a twitchy eye staring to my left,

weary of the same scavengers

with their same refrains

(“I ran out of smokes and the stores are closed.”)

Today has been hobo-free, 

and aside from an occasional

 misanthropic fit,

I really cannot complain.

But my mind, my mind is racing,

racing somewhere,

trying to keep a date

I did not even know I had.

©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas