Coffee House Blues

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This was written about 10 years, I found it in one of my old journals...


I am too old to be sitting in this coffee house, starving artist nightmares revisited. I have nothing to talk about with 19 year olds. Who wants to perform anything? My days of proving myself over. Enough "do you like it" nightmares! I never wanted to perform on stage.

There's the little conforming non-conformists with black dyed hair and rock-n-roll clothes, beaded belts and studs. Why haven't those ugly cat eye glasses gone out of style? What's with the chick with Henna on her hands wearing a shirt made out of scarves?

There goes one of the town's many drunks stumbling up to the stage platform to play the blues after having jeered and booed everyone from the charter school kid with the violin to the guy who played "too punk" for him. Incapable of uttering one coherent sentence, he at the age of 39 has claimed for himself coffee-house King status! Big Whoop!

There's that couple that can't stop kissing each other, they share each other's clothes and the boy side of the equation even borrows his girlfriend's lipstick. How did they not get thrown out of the ultra-conservative college down the street? Robert Smith has come back to life 15 years later. Does the Cure still even play anymore?

There's some guy I think that works here, with his fuzzy light socket hair from the 1970s. Why does he keep disappearing for extended periods into the back room with a few of the regulars? Does smoking cigarettes really take that long? He still wears peace sign patches on his jacket and has made heroes out of all the 1960s revolutionaries. When did he miss the memo that they all sold out to be rich 1980s yuppies?

One dude gets up on stage to rant about the government from time to time but remains totally uninformed. He's right about some things and wrong about others. His eyes glaze over every-time you get deeper then the most superficial. He seems like an odd combination of David Icke follower married to a Rush Limbaugh listener. He will tell you about UFOs but then in the next breath tell you Bush was a better president.

Here comes another libertarian, rural ***** seems to breed them like rabbits. They worship big business and think the free market will save us all. Ayn Rand worshippers one and all. They all seem to have money and land from Ma and Pa's defunct farm and stay busy fighting the man over their desire to cancel all welfare and disability, their right to smoke a bong in the middle of the town square unhindered and allow factory farms and trash dumps to choose whatever real estate they want to destroy.

As the world teeters on the edge of collapse they spend gleeful hours cleaning their arsenals and screwing around with Ham radios. It would never occur to them Alex Jones is probably bought and paid for too. Some seem to be impatient for Mad Max days to being as soon as possible, Maybe I'd be a prepper too if I could afford it, but without money, there's no generator in my back room or a year's worth of food on my shelves.

Time to get another cup of coffee.....