fizz
buzz
i remember being four or five at a friends birthday back when the fall of communism could still be heard underneath the sound of the city drinking coke for the first time and hating it because the acid burnt my tongue made my stomach loudly protest.
i was nine and ordering little plastic cups of coke for friends at a small mom n pop shop out in the country for all my would-be friends because my uncle gave me a fistful of coins and i was the richest kid on earth a king for all of two hours which is just as long as my nobleboys stuck around.
at fourteen my mum handed me some small bills with a tall grin and smiling eyes as i asked a cute girl out to a cute cafe and bought ourselves two cokes with lemon slices and ice sipping from two straws never sipped from just one.
at sixteen i took a bus across half the continent and stared wide-eyed at dozens of sights and buildings and mountains and statues and all i can now remember vividly is a little bookshop in munich wandering its stuffed and dusty corridors a bottle hanging in one hand.
four years later i worked on a construction site across the ocean the foreman called for lunch break and i sat on the second floor of a stripped down naked building by the beach in a moldy armchair eating pizza washing it down with coke staring into the great blue desert as seagulls cried out begging for scraps.
for all the hate and suspicion i offer to such companies and products the one thing i can picture appearing in every segment of my life is a black bottle with a red band across its chest still the same now and then and here and everywhere.
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