a weird smirk comes over me,
and i feel pleasantly smug,
for no reason, mind you, but all the same…
i can hear the sound of the piano in the other room,
but no one else is there,
so i think i’m with a ghost that knows my name,
along with what to say to boost my ego at just the right time
i found my old journal from when i was in college,
but i couldn’t understand what i was saying in it,
because i had the habit of writing in code
since it was around the time that snowden’s leaks came out
and i thought somehow cia satellites might be able to pick up
on my handwriting, so i developed my own clandestine way of
writing things down, though i never figured that i would need a
decoder ring to read my own damn thoughts
the latte i made for myself tastes weird,
and i can’t quite diagnose why,
though maybe it’s because i’ve grown tired of all the anaerobic naturals
coming out, and all i want is a bold, washed coffee,
or at least a pulped natural,
but none of this double fermented crap that’s kept in oxygen-deprived
barrels for 72hrs and told that its mother plant doesn’t love it anymore
Fred Aiken Writing 