NaPoWriMo #16: Urban Dweller

A furnace of concrete, petrol and cash,
city stream from the boiling streets
float above the blank-faced office towers.

To dwell on the hectic trading streets,
the city denizen must be astute,
as sharp as a swallow
at the turn of the season.

Sidestepping slow shoppers,
snapping up cut-price showstoppers,
drinking at the trendiest coffee shops

because all their friends go to them,
the watering holes of hollow insight
and futile strategies for the future
along with some rest from the tide.

Dodging traffic when crossing the road,
catching buses and trains on the go,
working indoors in the heat of day,

at the end of a chain of production,
heading finished articles to satisfy
the insatiable yet indecisive demand,
then walking home under the orange glare

when the street lights come out to play.

Ballad of the Coffee Bandits

There was a shop on the old town road
which sold nothing but coffee,
and many came to stop and behold
the wonders of cups of caffeine.

All that is except two cleaners,
tea drinkers through and through.
They both loathed all things coffee
and what its drinkers aspired to.

That coffee could eliminate falsehoods,
cure poverty and war,
that it held the font of all things good,
was what coffee stood for.

And so the tea maestros simmered,
their anger just about restrained
until some friends invited them to coffee
and they laughed through their pain.

So they went down to the coffee shop,
and raised it to the ground.
They fled with every bean in the place,
gone, never to be found.

NaPoWriMo #10 | How to Make a Cup of Tea

I've taken another prompt from the NaPoWriMo site for poem number ten. This time it's an abecedarian poem, or a poem structured according to the alphabet, combined with the ancient art of tea-brewing. I think I might've gotten a bit carried away with this one.

How to Make a Cup of Tea

Ask me how to make a cup of tea,
because I have no idea why
certain skills such as boiling a kettle
don't get used as often as they should.

Enough of the constant coffee I say,
forget all that mocha and espresso nonsense
good old home-brewed tea is in order.
How to make it is really simple,

I know because I do it more than enough.
Just use a single teabag and a small
kettle, and you'll be on your way to
lots of boiling and brewing in the future.

Most cups of tea need three minutes,
not fifteen as some experts suggest.
One way is to use a teapot, or if you
prefer, brew it in the cup. It's really

quite good once it's done, producing a
ravishing taste which even the best
second rate coffee machine couldn't match.
Teabag removal with a spoon is ideal,

unless you have a fork at hand, which is
vexing at the best of times, but still,
when the rain pours like the sound of a
xylophone, there's always the residual
zest to make a stirring cup of tea.