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.