My Savior at Saxby's

To the Beautiful Blonde Barista in Georgetown this past Sunday who smiled at me and afforded me the opportunity for ultimate hope. “…Now…now…WAIT A MINUTE!!! WAIT A MINUTE…ITS HER JOB TO SMILE AT YOU TONY…SHE SMILES AT ALL HER CUSTOMERS,” is what you might say.  Well, to that I give this rejoinder – SHE DID A MIGHTY FINE JOB THEN! A DANG GOOD JOB!!!

--------------/Savior at Saxby's


O Street NW is normally swanky, its students in a full embrace of opulence,
swag of the Gadarenes,
tall men in cardigans, skinny jeans and ties yellow as morning rays –
sexy girls
colorful leggings full of seduction hips singing come hither,
to the sun, the shining
light of life; of vitality’s immortality.
But on Sunday the street beneath me gave way…soft as muddy grass
of a requiem.
My heart like a man chained…
wrist in shackles, feet in bonds and accosting his neck
an unkempt and prickly beard, unshaven forgotten by years of empty dreams.
I felt as if my joy was guarded by sentinels of my despairing-
armed with spears those
recollections of rejection by girls like a hidden albeit blaring howling,
torturous echoes of loneliness in my head alone,
reverberating
(undetectable by human ear) my soul detained by my most tragic fears.
Under the shroud of darkness my heart compassed by tombs,
descent of love’s death like a demoniac driving me away
to seek coffee. Chased by black mist. 
And that’s when I saw her, like a Savior stepping off a boat,
cash register at Saxby’s her mast,
the most beautiful barista by thousands of years of prophecy heralded,
with hair like yarn from an archangel’s spindle flowing,
eyes the bluest diamonds ever mined for
in celestial clouds of the wildest of fantasy. Her smile was Gospel
like Noah’s rainbow
the only Benevolence the world has ever known.
When she took my order her voice was the sweetest exorcism,
iced black tea for my paranoia,
British coffee for fiendish dating psychosis
a coy grinning glance to drive all my preceding pain into pigs.
This beautiful white girl
with twelve disciples of ebullience set me free,
and so from now on I regard romantic foreboding only as squealing swine
tumbling down cliffs
into an eventual abyss


[O Beautiful Babe, when shall I see thee again? WELLLPPP...IN THE MEANTIME I'LL JUST VISIT SAXBYSCOFFEE.COM!!!! (They make a mean black iced tea!!!)]

-----Luke 8:26-33
Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee.  And when He stepped out on the land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs.  When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before Him, and with a loud voice said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me!”  For He had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles; and he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the wilderness. Jesus asked him, saying, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion,” because many demons had entered him.  And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss. Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain. So they begged Him that He would permit them to enter them. And He permitted them.   Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the lake and drowned.