Analysis of Coffee Houses and Anemic Sheets
Amber lights glowing on the walls,
throwing shadows on beatnik Kerouac
ghosts who sit among the unsuspecting
patrons of sort who frequent the coffee
house imbibing on espresso and vintage
wine expounding on anti-establishment
philosophy which gets thrown into the air,
like a ball waiting to be caught and then
thrown again and recaught.
Expressive hands adorned with jeweled
college rings wave excitedly during the
free-for-all conversations while bobbing
beret heads laugh at a joke or two;
the poet of the hour steps onto the rickety and
scratched stage----his platform is for rhetoric he can
only understand; his goatee is narrow, but not
his philosophy according to him. Clearing his throat
he begins:
Man, I'm like a white sheet hanging on the line----
tossed around by the wind, waiting to be dried
by the warm breath of the wind god and vitamin C
from the sun. Bugs are crawling all over me,
and wooden clothespins pinch my bleached
nerves. Man, I'm tired of hanging around
and being a parachute for creepy, crawling
creatures who are parasites on my being. Like I
wanna be free----free of 100 percent cotton,
hospital corners, quarter folds, and stuffed in
some drawer with matching anemic pillow cases.
Man, call me a bongo drum beating to the
rhythm off graffiti on brick walls, facing
over-flowing dumpsters, and fat rats stuffing
their mouths with garbage food.
Man, call me a cloud, rising above automatic
washing machines, and like drifting away from
push-button conveniences. Call me a fly-away
sheet, like I can be any where, any time because
of my liberty. I'm soaring like a glider, riding
on air, like teasing the birds on their treetops,
climbing higher and higher until everything
looks like a patchwork quilt.
Man, like sheets can dream, can't they?
Scheme | XXABXCXXC CDAXXXXXX XXBBXXAXXXXDAAX XXEXAXAX E |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10110101 101110100 111010010 1011110010 11110010 10101100100 01001110101 1011011101 10101 01010111 10110100100 111010110 101110111 010101011001000 11111110011 100111111011 10100010111011 101 11101110101 10110110111 1011101101001 10111101101 0101111 1111011001 01001011010 101110111011 1011110110 1010101010 111100101010 1110111010 10101011110 10101001110 111101 111011001010 10010110011 1100100110101 1111110110101 11100110101010 1111001111 10100100110 11011 1111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,754 |
Words | 296 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 15, 8, 1 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 283 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 60 |
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"Coffee Houses and Anemic Sheets" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/44327/coffee-houses-and-anemic-sheets>.
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