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Tess  Sep 2018
Teacups
Tess Sep 2018
People
Are like
Teacups

Some are pretty
Some are plain

Some have a saucer
Some don't

Some carry warmth within them
Some turn cold in a blink

Some are the favorites
That we see everyday

But some are lost in the dark
Without their existence being known


But in the end,
They're just teacups
gabriela arias  Mar 2018
teacups
gabriela arias Mar 2018
When I think of you
                                                             ­                    I think of teacups;
for when my mind is blank                
                              
                                 ­  the thoughts of you manage to

                                               l
                                                      e
       ­                                                       a
        ­                                                              k

­                                                                 ­             inside my head.
inspired on my cracked coffee mug & the love of my life. (to be seen on a computer screen to appreciate layout)
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
        A persona che mai tornasse al mondo
        Questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.
        Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
        Non tornò vivo alcun, s’i'odo il vero,
        Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to ****** and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
  So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the ****-ends of my days and ways?
  And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
  And should I then presume?
  And how should I begin?

     . . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

     . . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in
     upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
  Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all;
  That is not it, at all.’

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail
     along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
  ‘That is not it at all,
  That is not what I meant, at all.’

     . . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Tiffany Norman Oct 2014
Moths float out from behind
an opened, warped door.
I push my face into your clothes,
hung heavy like pearls
in an antique shop.
Stale and familiar,
the scent follows me
like a lost little bee.
It buzzes even after I leave.

Hopscotch down the hallway
to find dead crickets
in the bathtub.
Scuffed wallpaper camouflages
a cobweb. Metallic vines
curve around bursts of petals.
I’m certain you chose this pattern,
but I don't know.

Memories are few.
I fill in the holes with honey
and arrowheads.
Indian feathers and
an old brooch.
Piles of pie.
Did you love to bake pie?

Games of bridge
on that old, scratched table top
with a musty deck of Bicycle cards.
Each deck a photo album
of your face.

Your raisined face.
I remember holding it in my hands.
“This aint a walk for old womans.”
And out the door I go.
Empty handed and independent.
Julia Brennan Aug 2015
tonight she is
tip-toeing
on
little peach teacups,
teetering
on tiny saucer plates,
and
relishing the
somber chimes
left on their delicate
frames

her toes
embroider doilies of the
Universe,
her smile a beam
of
Light
exuding from
a bewildered heart

from
setting to setting
she samples a
taste
of little cakes and cucumber sandwiches
before her,
but
continues
to float
over the tableware
until she meets
the warm embrace
of
morning's
sweet release
Arlene Bozich  Jul 2012
Dignity
Arlene Bozich Jul 2012
Tell your gods we call for blood
We're stirring hurricanes in your teacups.
It's an instant headache cure at the end of a barrel,
Though a worthwhile gauntlet to continue to breathe.

We’re stirring hurricanes in your teacups
It might be easier to crash and burn.
Though a worthwhile gauntlet to continue to breathe,
We should never measure our breaths to our steps

It might be easier to crash and burn.
Children die from the painful things they learn.
We should never measure our breaths to our steps,
But the dignity in life is too beautiful to regret.

Children die from the painful things they learn
It’s an instant headache cure at the end of a barrel
But the dignity in life is too beautiful to regret.
Tell your gods we call for blood
My attempt at a pantoum. Trying a new form of poetry each time I write now!
Mikaila  May 2014
Medusa
Mikaila May 2014
Thin, white wrists.
Bone white
Like china
And just as brittle.
They make that coarse, scraping sound when they touch one another.
The kind of sound that delicate, expensive teacups make when stacked
The wrong way.
It makes me cringe.

Little blue veins kiss the surface of them,
Hissing and sizzling when the air gets
Too close
Like tiny snakes.

These wrists
Have made promises.
They have
Borne loads.
These wrists have snapped like twigs
Under the weight of a heavy,
Punishing love.
But, pressed back together the way they'd been,
They hardened oncemore
Like stone
And the cracks and fissures
Sank inside again
And smooth, unmarred, delicate white skin emerged
To begin the process over.

At night the snakes whisper and murmur against my cheek in their sleep
And sometimes, quite suddenly,
They sink in their fangs
And I awaken with a start,
A sharp pain radiating out to my fingertips
Like a shock.

Last night I felt their strikes by the hour
One,
Two,
Three, more.
And this morning a strange... fullness
Began in my wrists
And seeped out
Up along my arms
Through my collarbones and down
Into my heart.

Perhaps it was the venom
Working
But where it spread I
Settled
Like an old stone wall.
Like the halls of a castle
That has seen too much death
And too many kings.

I sank into myself
For the first time
And the ground felt heavily solid
And I felt
Only the hollow hiss
Of little blue and green serpents
Dreaming inside me
And that
Was something like certainty,
Although of what
I still don't
Know.
mzwai  Feb 2015
Teabag
mzwai Feb 2015
You eventually get tired of seeking answers to all of your problems when
You've reached your seventeenth birthday and you're bored of trying to change
Because you've managed to convince yourself that it is alright to be an artist
With only a teacup as your motivation to actually have an aesthetic.
You reconciled a long time ago that it wasn't worth the trouble
roaming the streets and picking up inspirations from everything that you see.
You developed a longing for someone who wasn't there and now you're clinging
Onto the void they left as you watch the dreariness of your life
Pass through phases you're too exasperated with trying to describe
almost every time you find yourself alone without your intention.
Sometimes you try,
beginning with, "It's funny how the coldest people can make your heart feel the warmest."
or
"I wish I didn't need to spend my life relining structures of my own heartache just to be able to exist functionally," but,
the rest of what comes out doesn't really correlate with what you feel
and everything you beautify now becomes everything that stops being real.
You had to learn how to strip everything away.
Now you fill your bedroom with thoughts until the lights go off because you're too tired
To say darkness is an excuse. It's not what inspires you anymore.
So you've allowed yourself to only listen to artistic thoughts you experience when you're staring at your grandmothers teacup.
She gave it to you before you even knew how to make tea and now every night before you go to bed you stare at it like it can give you something the streets of capital cities with
big towers and dark skylines looked up on the internet past midnight when you were
miserable couldn't and wouldn't unless you actually went there.
You sit at your table and drop the teabag into the cup, just like your grandmother showed you. You have no image of what contents are supposed to dissolve,
But you watch the water as it changes colors so quickly. Clear to brown,
Clear to green, Clear to red.
You watch the ripples like sound waves,
affecting everything from the centre of the cup to the edge of it.
Those ripples are so small but they will affect everything eventually.
You imagine little people, colonies, not exactly living in the water but living
In their own version of reality where water is to them what sound is to humans.
"I wonder what happens when someone drinks all of the music out."
"Nobody lives. That's what happens."
You then imagine plummeting and the way teacups are a lot like rivers which people throw pebbles in.
You see the curve of the ceramic, the paleness of the white over the blackness of the stripes next to it and the way the bottom of the cup is rounded whilst visible even when it's filled with dark liquid...
You then think of human bodies plummeting into rivers.
In a way stones are sort of like teabags and when people's emotional burdens are materialized
They sometimes take the form of both.
(Here's a burden- put it in your pocket and jump into a river. Tie it around a string and dip it into your teacup.)
It's so whimsical how clear it is how you feel about people.
You wish you weren't as desperate as this- to think that it was artistic to think about ending
Your pain at a time where everybody wouldn't notice you're awake.
But you know that they also think these but don't express it because they don't have a pain their trying to destroy with revelations of meaninglessness.
You have now changed your aesthetic into your coping-mechanism,
And nobody needs to know.

Every single night you stare at teacups and think about why you're here and why you're not.
You still haven't found a reason and now you wish you never thought about rivers before you drank your tea or even got out the teabags.
Because now when you see teabags, you only see stones.
And instead of dropping them into boiling water you want to put them into your pockets.
But it's your aesthetic and it is your art.
And you'll never stop doing it,
You'll never stop doing it...
Martin Narrod Feb 2014
The Checkout Line

I wish to speak with you
ten years from now, you'll be ten years behind.

The words and meanings you carry in your pants, the pick-pocket steals your hopes from time.
and the visions of empty trash receptacles
with their late evening drunken lovers' bouts, at restless end tables. And the bums with their ******* attitudes **** covered clothes, and soiled minds

the clarity of the curbside drunk, picking up shades of filtered cigarettes of twilight scandalous
pickup lovers in their evening best.

And to talk with you ten years from now, you'll be ten years behind.

They're Green Beret head ornaments
detailing the porcelain platforms of Delft
Lining up for one last line to carry them into another faded sunrise at dawn's forgotten memory of yester night
and they walk their gallows holding pride fully their flags of exalted countrymen.

The republic of teacups of literary proficiency.
Wearing the necklaces of paid tolls to an afterlife they find in the miniscule car crashes of engagement with a grinless driving mate in a neighboring car in its pass into the forethought of turned corners.
Where they befell the great disappointment of failure in the frosted eyes of their fathers' expectations.

Who carried the shame of their mother's incessant discontent through short skirts, and high heels.

Who disapproved of the **** whom wore the sneak-out-of-the-house-wear clothing line, and traveled by night over turbulent asphalt by way of sidecar through turn and turnabout hand-over-hand contracts of lover's affection, and slept in tall grasses of wet nightfall with views of San Francisco, and were trapped in the inescapable Alcatraz and Statesville of unconsenting parents and their curfews,

through trials and trails of Skittles leading to after school Doctor visits in the basement of a doting mother, whilst she sits quietly in her exclusive quilting parties with noble equities of partners in knowledge, listening to Edith Piaf and the like,

All the while condemned to time, trapped in the second hand, hand me downs of the 21st century, decades of decadent introverts with their table top unread notebooks, and old forgotten score cards, and the numbers of scholars of years past,

and to talk with you ten years from now will be my greatest pleasure, for you will be....ten year's behind.


They push the sterile elevator buttons, and descend upon the floor of scents flourishing from their crowded family rooms, only aware of distinctive flavors, in their middle eastern shades of desert gumbo,

Who speak ribbit and alfalfa until midnight of the afternoon, sharing fables of slaughtered giraffes and camels that walked from Kiev to Baghdad in a fortnight,

Who are aware the power is out, but continue to scour for candles in a dark room where candles once burned, where candle wax seals the drawers of where candles can be found. Where once sat gluttonous kings and queens in Sunday attire waiting for words of freedom from the North.

of Florence, Sochi,Shanghai
of Dempster, Foster, Lincoln
of Dodge, Ford, Shelby

Of concrete fortune tellers in 2nd story tenement blocks with hairy legs, and head lice, wearing beautiful sachets of India speaking ribbit and alfalfa.

On their unbirthdays they walk the fish tanks wearing their birthday suits to remind them who serves the food on the floors of the family room fish mongers tactics.

The old men wear gargoyles on their shoulders.

Lo! Fear has crept the glass marbles of their wisdom and fortune, blearing rocket ships and kazoos on the sidewalks of their Portuguese forefathers.

Where ancestry burns cigarette holes in the short-haired blue carpet, where Hoover breaks flood waters of insignificance across hard headed Evangelical trinities.

Who share construction techniques one early morning at four, where questions of Hammer and **** build intelligence in secondary faces of nameless twilight lovers, who possess bear blankets, and upheavals, finely wired bushes of ***** maturity. Eating *** and check, tongue and pen.

Where police caress emergency flame retardants over the fire between their legs, wielding the chauvinistic blade of comfort in the backseat of a Yellow faced driving patron.

With their innocent daughters with their nubile thighs, and malleable personalities, which require elite words and jewelry. Wearing wheat buns, Longfellow, and squire.

Holding postmarked cellular structure within their mobile anguish.

Who go curling in their showers, pushing afternoon naps and pretentious frou-frou hats over tainted friendships with their girlfriend's brothers with minimum paychecks'.

Through their narcissus and narcosis, their mirrored perceptions of medicinal scripture of Methamphetamine and elegant five-star meat.

Who amend their words with constitutional forgiveness, in their fascist cloth rampages through groves of learning strategies. And the closets, cupboards, and coins
with rubber hearts, steel *****, and gold *****,

Tall-tales of sock puppet hands with friendly sharing ******* techniques, dry with envy, colorful scabs, and coagulation of eccentric ****** endeavors, With their social lubricants and their tile feet wardrobes with B-quality Adidas and Reeboks gods of the souls of us. Who possess piceous syndromes of Ouiji boards in their parent’s basements.

When will fire burn another Bush? Spread the fire walls of Chicago, and part grocery store fields of food. Wrapping towels under the doors of smoke filled lungs, on the fingernails of a sleepover between business executives with the neoprene finish of their sons and daughters who attend finishing school, with resumes of oak furnishings,

And I long to talk with you ten years from now,
For you'll be talking ten years behind.

Who profligate their padded inventories breaking Mohammed and Hearst,
laying the pillows of cirrus minor
waiting for the rain to paint the eyes of the scriptures which waft through concrete corridors,
and scent the air with their exalted personas,

With the different channels of confusions, watching dimple past freckle, eating the palms of our tropical mental vocations to achieve purity from the indignation of those whom are contemptuous for lack of innocence in America,
this America, of lack of peace,
of America hold me,
Let me be.

Whom read the letters off music, blearing Sinatra and Krall, Manson where is your contempt?

Manson where is your manipulation of place settings?, you deserve fork and knife, the wounded commandments that regretfully fall like timber in an abandoned sanctuary of Yellowstone,
Manson, with your claws of the heart.
Manson, with your sheik vulgarity of **** cloaks exposing your ladies undercarriage,

Those who take their pets to walk the aisles of famished eyes,
allowing the dorsals of their backsides to wonder aimlessly through Vietnam and Chinaman,
holding peace of mind aware of their chemical leashes and fifteen calorie mental meals, holding hands, unaware of repercussion,

With their vivid recollections of sprinkler and slide, through dew and beyond,
Holding citrus drinks to themselves, apart from pleasure, trapped with excite from sunsets, and in-between.

Withholding reservation of tongue to lung.
Flowing ribbit and alfalfa, in the corridors of expected fragrance.

and to speak with you of ten years from now, will be a pleasure all my own, for you will be talking ten years behind.

They walked outside climbing over mountains of shrapnel, popped collars
and endless buffets of emotion,
driving Claremont all the way to art gallery premiers
and forever waited for plane crash landings
and the phone calls that never came

Glowing black and white cameras
giving modelesque perceptions to all-you-can-eat eyes
giving cigarettes endless chasms of light

Colored pavement trenches and divots
cliff note alibis
and surgery that lasted until the seamstress had gone into an
endless rest
and
empty cupboards

Classic stools painted with sleepless white smoke and bleached canvas rolling tobacco with the stained yellow window panes of feral tapestry and overindulgent vernacular

Like a satiated cheeseburger weeping smile simple emotion
on November the 18th celebrations
and Wisconsin out of business sales

Too much comfort, stealing switchboards from the the elderly, constantly putting gibberish into
effortless conversation.

Dormant doormats, with the greetings that never
reached as far as coffee table favelas,
arriving to homes of famished
furniture, awaiting temperate lifestyles and the window sill arguments from pedantic literacy

Silver shillings and corporate discovery clogged the persuasive
push and shove
to and from

Killing enterprise
loquacious attempt at too soon
much too soon
too soon for forever

Wall to wall post-card collages
happy reminders of the places never visited by drinks in the hands of
those received

Registered to the clouded skies of clip board artists
this arthritis of envy
of bathtub old age
wrinkled matted faces
logged with quick-fixes, anemia, and heart-break

disposed of off the streets
of youth, wheeling and wailing
rolling down striped stairs
of shock and arraignment
holding the hand rails of a wheelchair
suitcase
packed away in a life

Down I-37
into the ochre autumn fallen down leaves
and left memories behind
their green Syphilis eyeglasses

weeping tumuli
recalcitrant
mulish, furrow of beast and beyond

yelling, screaming, howling
at the prurient puerile tilling
of sheets

****** the voices of words
and vomiting the mind into the pockets of the turbulent perambulations
expelled from meat-packing
whispering condescension
and coercing adolescent obsessions
with fame, glamour, and *****

Creeping out into the naked
light of the Darger scale janitorial
closets, carrying the notorious gowns
of red wine spells, backpacks, and pins

henchmen, plaintiff, and youth

All the while
ripping at the incantations of the soul
whispering ribbit and alfalfa
in the guard-rail scars
of the dawns decadent forgotten
Katie Elzinga May 2015
Porcelain skin,
white with rosy cheeks.
Lips sewn shut,
concealing her shrieks.
Knotted hair,
with pink pretty bows.

Smiling mouth,
lips red as a rose.
Eyes open,
staring at blank space.
Pretty dresses,
covered all in lace.

Broken teacups,
will soon fall apart.
Never revealing,
her lack of a heart.
Perfect girl,
with an alluring complexion.

Fails to see,
her and her reflection.
Flawless,
you can’t see her cracks.
Scarred,
only seeing whites and blacks.

Collecting dust,
sitting on a shelf.
Contemplating,
life itself.
I wrote this in October 2014 for school and it kind of ***** but it got a lot of views on my other account (which i forgot the user and pass for so lol)
Darren  Oct 2014
Teacups
Darren Oct 2014
Quaint with the ribbons soft
Another asking question laid
Will there be more to come
If the longer that I wait

Teacups drip the watered red
So thin a comparison drawn
I can flesh out the gaze
Moment by that dazzling dawn

Across with hands palm up
Mine atop your stubborn shoulders
Ease out the answer by
Removing Atlas from the boulder

Relaxed bands and flushed cheeks
Smile back reciprocating
The leaves rest below the lip
Strengthening the tasteful sting

A look into each other's pools
Limpid slow and restful now
Until our fingers rapping
Dance the waves together found
Originally written on October 12, 2014.
Second poem for the Hundred Themes Contest.  I will be doing them in order appeared on their group home page, for those who want some foreshadowing.
Contest can be seen here:  the-poetry-cafe.deviantart.com
Profile: http://monocephalized.deviantart.com/
Theme: Love.

— The End —