Satori in a Paper Cup

I saw God once—
behind the counter at Sweet Dreams Café,
steaming milk with a wisdom she didn’t know she had.
She called out the wrong name,
but it sounded like heaven,
and I thought: this must be a sign.

We were apostles of caffeine and clove,
chanting Ginsberg between sips of lukewarm truth,
thinking every poem was a lockpick for the universe,
every barista a bodhisattva
with a nose ring and a minor in comparative lit.

I wore enlightenment like a secondhand coat,
too big in the shoulders, reeking of incense and irony,
adorned with buttons that said QUESTION REALITY
but never asked why I thought revolution
could be bought at the thrift store
with four bucks and a Salinger quote.

O, I was radiant with borrowed light—
a metaphysical desperado with a backpack of bad poems,
preaching satori in parking lots,
trying to barter haikus for pizza slices,
thinking the sacred hid behind jukeboxes and streetlamps,
that salvation came in syllables and bongos.

And those women—Christ, those women
who saw right through my dime-store mysticism,
who laughed like prophets,
who kissed like warnings,
who said “Being deep doesn’t mean you have to drown”
and left me in my bathtub church,
scribbling manifestos in steam.

We weren’t soldiers.
We were the ash after—
chasing ghosts through chemical fog,
calling the crash enlightenment,
swearing the bruises were blessings
if we closed our eyes hard enough.

And maybe he was wrong about everything,
but God—he was glorious in it.