Here comes the Anxietea.
                
                      Best
                          
                            Gulp  
                                    
                                       It
                                        
                                            down.

it is three a.m. here
and the unseasonable cold
has etched itself onto the knobby bones of my spine
and eats voraciously at the
callous of bone and metal
that now suffices as my
lower left leg...

in answer, i sit in front of the
newly stoked fire, as close as i can without becoming fuel
and await the painkillers sweet surcease.

i drink russian caravan tea
and as always,
it draws my thoughts to you.

the time spent with cup in hand and eyes full of laughter.
the way you rolled each teabag up into a neat little
parcel...

and those times of ceremony, birthdays and
big announcements.

when the tealeaf was allowed to swirl joyously and swim in the squat blue teapot,
releasing the aroma of
a gypsy campfire...
all rowdy, with celebration
and then served with the
orange and ginger cake,
(so **** good)of which,
i never did get the recipe.

always, the tea, served
in fine bone china
the tea, visible through
the white translucent pottery..
and we still,  playing at being, civilised and grown up...

the tears slide,
gently,down my cheeks
to fall and be comsumed
by the warm hearth...
as the gypsy songs fade

and i do not know,
whether, it is from the pain or sad and grasping grief,
that they come...
                          but they come.

I could never read
                             tealeaf's,
because I thought it tasted
like nicotine flooded ashtrays..

translating censorship was like
                                         morse-code,
for every breath serenaded my
                                    lack of interest..

Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.
-Thomas Wolfe


When the rain falls flat
in the rough plane one morning
& the stark meridian sky
hauled by night before
the sun rises not like any day,
serious & sullen silk same.

When you walk on the earth
hearing your footsteps
tossing stones and hurled mud
like how you hit and hit
the letters from your womb
in the dark swollen night
soon to burst like a pulsar
where even silence tempts
not to hear again the pulse
& let silence devours the cloud.

Ah! When the rain falls flat
when you walk on the earth
this little autobiography
tells the life so cold and brute
squabbling, wrangling
like a supernova missing its due
perhaps a century, perhaps a second
but who could tell
when one about to implode
will he be the same being again?

The tealeaf shivers
in the rain not in a cup.

This, of course, is not a myth
but a thousand telling noise
of nominal truths soaked
in ashes of those leaves
burnt in the midday sun kissing
that no one, even a wind
could ever remember
but just a tiny hissing
or was it meant
for a long hush hush.

Tea Leaves

The house seemed so small.
Yet here in my memory as a child
so very long ago it was always huge.
I walk through the rooms .
Familiar as they always were.

I can almost hear your voice
Calling me to the table.
Or to get ready for bed.

The packing had almost finished
Everything in boxes that would
never be opened again.

In your old kitchen I pack the
dinnerware that had had carried
our sustenance until I was an adult.
Piece by piece
I carefully place them in the box.

Then I find your old china tea cup
The one you used faithfully
each day of your life.
It still had a single tealeaf
Dried and on the rim.
Where your lips had been.

That is when the grief hit me
as it had never done before