‘Perked Coffee’ and Other Poetry by Bob McGinness

Perked Coffee

Things today are bad and getting worse,
examples always seem to us abound:
service for consumers seems perverse,
and music does not have that vinyl sound.

My garden pruners, they don’t last one season,
and dealers’ auto service seems a scam,
the prices for my phone plan beyond reason,
and did I really need that angiogram.

Beyond the checkout line, it is not true!
There is one process never really worked,
and better now, because it’s better new,
in good old days the coffee, it was perked.

You think that metal tube was ever clean?
They always lost that glass top apparatus.
They boiled that coffee ‘til it lost it’s sheen,
and what about that clogged up basket lattice?

And when you walked away and you forgot,
it boiled and thickened down into a sludge,
upon the stove that bubbling coffee pot,
had turned into a dirt-brown coffee fudge.

Unless you paid it much too much attention,
and turned it down too early in the game.
It wasn’t really coffee, should I mention,
but just some tepid water without name.

Reflect upon that previous generation.
The good old days are not remembered true.
We don’t need aromatic percolation,
life’s better now – we have a better brew.

Dishwasher Loading

The dishwasher council convened in Chicago,
to deal with the Issue, a national disgrace;
brought to attention by Procter and Gamble
who stumbled upon it in their database.

The loading of silverware, dishes and plastics,
is not in curriculums taught in our schools.
A competence lost in just three generations:
the placement of dishes according to rules.

They’re throwing the silverware loose on the top rack,
long handled spoons strewn in gross disarray.
They’re nesting the bowls, one on top of the other,
the cast iron fry pan inhibits the spray.

Jamming pot handles – no water discharges,
the seals on the door are beginning to leak,
all the small items have dropped to the basin,
including the fragments of broken Belleek.

There’s tupperware melted all over the grating.
The spinning arm doesn’t revolve any more.
The element heater, all covered in melted
plastic from some Toys-R-Us dinosaur.

The council decided to study the problem,
develop a trademark like “Dishwasher Mother,”
to educate multitudes loading dishwashers,
and sponsor a contest on next year’s Big Brother.

Bob McGinness lives in Columbia, SC with his wife and two cats. More of his work can be found at www.wretchedrhymes.com