Carol Jenkins
Ode to Coffee
for Dimitri M.
Bean of the under cup, morning starter,
Cash crop, red-coated civet bait, first date.
Cake’s companion, Romeo to the cigarette’s Juliette,
Red bull in the china shop of sleep.
Bo-Peep-eyer, Bach-analian canto berry,
Universal stainer, unfair trader.
Heart beat accelerator, head-ache
giver, head-ache taker, piddle maker.
Political agitator, habit dictator, your mode:
percolated, filtered, pressed a carbon-dater.
Literary hot-spot generator, cocoa’s cousin, caffeine
conduit, substrate of small talk and revolution.
Retailer of the milk moustache, soy-latte decaf bypass,
picker-upper and putter-downer.
Machiavellian dehydrator, global drug of choice,
Bean that launched a million shops.
Carol Jenkins’ first book of poetry Fishing in the Devonian (Puncher & Wattmann, 2008) was shortlisted for the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Her second book, Xn will be out in June 2013, also from Puncher & Wattmann. Jenkins writes: “My sister’s partner Dimitri Mauer hinted he would like a poem, and as he, like me, is a coffee fiend, I wrote ‘Ode to Coffee’. Pharmacologically caffeine drinks, especially potent ones like coffee, are addictive but as a society we seem to completely ignore that.”