Can I ascend a poem allegorical?
Are Tetley's teabags paradoxical?
A teabag is full of strength,
Teabag enters moisture at string's full length,
Radiating vigour and a pick-me-up,
While the tea drinker begins to sup,
There is the lonesome teabag,
Sodden, drained by old hag,
Limp and fatigued,
I ponder, intrigued,
Are teabags signs sent from above?
Are teabags truly true love?
Is this a poem allegorical?
Used teabags--quite paradoxical!!

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...

This heart isn’t hallow
This emptiness is just
As full as it can get
Like drowning a sealed
Water bottle full of
Oxygen

My heart breathes like a water boarding
Screams for first dates
That don’t come
Crushes over girls
Who ask me out to coffee so
They can brag about having coffee
With a cute guy to me
While the two of us
Have coffee

Smile
Do not show the hallow
Do not let the wind being knocked out of you
Whistle off of your rib cage
Like love notes being shredded

Remember
This is just coffee
Don’t pay attention to the fact that
Coffee hardly ever happens
Don’t pay attention to the fact that
You’ve literally had a crush on this girl since
Before you actually met her
Don’t pay attention to the fact that
There might not ever be another
Coffee

Remember
This is just your life
They don’t write love stories for hallowed out hearts
Or at least hearts that are only full of an outlining
Of oxygen
With skin singed from dysphoria
I hear it’s not good theater
If the main character looks like
A burn victim—
A bit indistinguishable
Like someone threw
Scalding coffee over your gender
Or tried to fill your heart with it

Breathe

Remember getting over her
It wasn’t hard
After all
It was just coffee
And it wasn’t like you
Had hope to fill your heart with
It was too full of out-linings
It’d be like stuffing a net with sand
Or trying to pour coffee into a
Shattered cup

Breathe

Let the broken shards of the
I-guess-this-really-is-just-coffee cups
Fill your lungs
It’s easier than breathing in another night
Of lonely
At least then you know
There was coffee
And glasses that fell apart
In tune with the shattering
Of your heart
So human
To lose something
By breaking it

Breathe

Remember
There was another coffee
And another girl
And this time we didn’t drink
From busted cups
But in something sturdy
Like a glass of hugs
That held the future of more time together
And had teabags of hope attached to strings
Of fingers that interlocked with hers
On the couch during our
Second date

My god
I know we had on shoes
With rubber souls
But that night your
Fingertips felt electric
Like a coffee cup with
An outlet in it
And the fork of my fingers found
The shock inside of you
It was warm like
Body heat
Or setting yourself on fire
*******
I never knew holding hands could make
My burned heart
Feel like a bonfire
Of shredded love notes
And shattered cups

I squeezed your hand a bit too hard
Like ripping coffee out of a sponge
I hoped you didn’t feel
How desperately I needed to hold
Onto the lifeboat rope of your arm
Because I’ve been drowning
In shards of glass from
I-guess-this-really-is-just-coffee cups
My whole life

I wish that second dates
Came with instruction manuals
Because I had no idea what to do
So at 2am
When you said you needed to leave
I walked you out to your car
And while I never read an instruction manual
I know that was the right move
Because you turned
And smushed your face into mine
Like I was stealing cotton candy in my mouth

I’m glad you were a good kisser
Because I know that kissing cotton candy
Has to be awkward as ****
But I hope that you at least found
Something sweet somewhere between
My lips

My god
How great a thief you were
When I checked my breath
The next morning
It was gone
Electrocuted from my lungs
And now I knew why kids
Keep shoving forks
Into outlets
It’s because the electric feels ******* incredible
Like taking a bath in oxygen
Or drowning in an ocean of inhales
Or fighting off a horde of dragons by
******* breathing on them

So Breathe

Remember
Cotton candy may seem sweet
But it doesn’t last forever
Eventually
Everyone can’t bare to have
Another bite

Awkward-at-first-kisses became
Awkward kisses
Breath kept coming home early
And dragons began to breathe
Back at me

I wasn’t surprised when you told me
You started seeing someone
It made sense
I always kept too many dragons around
With screaming hearts
And shattered coffee cups
Burning everything

I wasn’t surprised when I cried that day
It made sense
I had all of my oxygen back now
It was the only kind of breath
I knew

You see, oxygen flows through the heart and
Circles through the veins
I know oxygen
Like shattered coffee cups
And broken hallows
Filled with oceans of air

I guess that’s why
I set my heart on fire
Because maybe
It was never
There.

So here we are, just you and me. On the edge of everything and nothing, we sit staring out into the ocean of things we wish we’d done.

We hold hands, it’s a formality. I’m scared. You soothed my anxiety, because even though I was scared of you, I knew everyone else was too.

I miss making you coffee in the morning, I wish I’d loved YOU more. You always had that massive mug with two teabags or two tablespoons of coffee.

I wish your family and I could have worked. Please don’t think for a second I didn’t try. Most of my time spent at yours was on eggshells, the ones they had placed.

I miss our first year, your second. Remember that? We were so silly and full of joy. Gimmick Puppets, Plants. You and your stupid trenchcoat that ended up smelling awful no matter how much you washed it. Your long hair was nice. I liked it. It framed your smile that was as bright as the Sun that set in the West over Zephyr’s strawberry field.

The light sank in your eyes the more you were with me. I drained you, I knew that. I stayed. I lied. You didn’t trust me anymore.

I’m happy, admittedly lonely. But I know you’re happy, scared but happy. It’s always been my job to appear, do what I must (whether I know what that is or not) and watch over. The bear finds another like him, and as I remember mentioning a few times, as we lounged lazily on the sofa with our cereal, playing every bit the monsters others cast us out to be;

What on Earth is a bear doing with an angel?

Coffee house
windows drape
litters of faces
like teabags
milk white but
feature black yolks
in sunken pits--
sinking pits, dip
under the morning
embers. Sunny side
where? A day begins
though you lot, out
to dry, waiver it off;
It's not ours, you say,
It's yours and you's
filling the streets below.
We's wait for the sunny,
we's wait for the up.

I've been going right on, page by page,
since we last kissed, two long dolls in a cage,
two hunger-mongers throwing a myth in and out,
double-crossing out lives with doubt,
leaving us separate now, fogy with rage.

But then I've told my readers what I think
and scrubbed out the remainder with my shrink,
have placed my bones in a jar as if possessed,
have pasted a black wing over my left breast,
have washed the white out of the moon at my sink,

have eaten The Cross, have digested its lore,
indeed, have loved that eggless man once more,
have placed my own head in the kettle because
in the end death won't settle for my hypochondrias,
because this errand we're on goes to one store.

That shopkeeper may put up barricades,
and he may advertise cognac and razor blades,
he may let you dally at Nice or the Tuileries,
he may let the state of our bowels have ascendancy,
he may let such as we flaunt our escapades,

swallow down our portion of whisky and dex,
salvage the day with some soup or some ***,
juggle our teabags as we inch down the hall,
let the blood out of our fires with phenobarbital,
lick the headlines for Starkweathers and Specks,

let us be folk of the literary set,
let us deceive with words the critics regret,
let us dog down the streets for each invitation,
typing out our lives like a Singer sewing sublimation,
letting our delicate bottoms settle and yet

they were spanked alive by some doctor of folly,
given a horn or a dish to get by with, by golly,
exploding with blood in this errand called life,
dumb with snow and elbows, rubber man, a mother wife,
tongues to waggle out of the words, mistletoe and holly,

tables to place our stones on, decades of disguises,
wntil the shopkeeper plants his boot in our eyes,
and unties our bone and is finished with the case,
and turns to the next customer, forgetting our face
or how we knelt at the yellow bulb with sighs
like moth wings for a short while in a small place.

i.
last week you were sitting by your window watching the sun melt into a thousand shades of darkness and you thought of her. you still remember how she always smelled like lavender and roses and peonies and freshly mowed grass and rain - a living breathing walking talking singing dancing growing but ever so slowly dying garden. you suppose she must've smelled like cigarettes as well, since she went through a pack a week, and the whiskey she laced her coffee with and the teabags she used as toothbrushes, but all you can remember is the garden of her mind and the green of her thumbs that planted flowers in-between your ribs and turned your blood to a breeding ground for aphids. a single lotus flower can live for a thousand years. a single memory can live even longer.

ii.
on the train ride to paris she didn't think of you, instead she counted all the prime numbers from one to one thousand and kissed a boy with oceans for eyes. you came home to an empty house in february, a receipt for valentine's day roses still fresh in your wallet. all of your belongings were still there, tainted with the memory of her - the set of calligraphy pens she got you for hanukkah, the sweater of yours she would always wear in the mornings after *** while drinking coffee and filling out the crossword. the endless number of bobby pins she'd left in your bedroom were still there, littering your floor like land mines. you found the flowers she planted in your veins tossed in the trash, and you spent hours pulling each petal from its receptacle and deciding that if she'd ever loved you she would have chosen something gentler than forget-me-nots to sew into your veins. the seeds of a lotus flower must be cracked before they can be planted, must be broken to allow the water to seep into them and breathe possibility into their veins. your heart is cracked, have you blossomed yet?

You aren’t the only one with secrets. Some secrets will be shared but I imagine most go unspoken, because the best kept secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves, those things we don’t know that we have hidden or forget we ever hid in one of those hiding places we don’t know we have.

She imagines the sound of a spine cracking when she crumples plastic bottles to recycle.
He hates his father and not because he’s an alcoholic with a vicious temper
           but because he gets more attention from the woman he’s married to,
           his mother, than she gives to him.
She doesn’t like his laugh.
He doesn’t like his laugh.
She won’t answer the telephone because she’s afraid of being mistaken for a child.
He won’t answer because he feels sick thinking about all the prints other people
         have left on the receiver.
She has recurring nightmares about her childhood teddy bear and
         she is reaching forty-five years old.
She resents her baby because she has to give up drinking for her pregnancy.
He resents her for being pregnant.
He has never had a dream he can remember so he makes them up.
She makes up anecdotes that bear little importance to make her life seem interesting.
He is planning on killing himself before he is at the age his hair begins to fall out.
He intentionally hold his jaw clenched to make it appear more chiselled.
        He read this in a magazine.
She refuses to take her socks off in bed. She said she read in a magazine
         that *** is better if the socks remain on. She actually hates her feet,  
         and his feet and all feet.
She makes herself ***** more than seven times every day. She has done this  
         for five consecutive years. She is clinically overweight.
His hair is not naturally the colour people think it is.
She has fantasies about her boyfriend’s sister.
He is afraid to go outside or near sharp objects or get in a car because
         of his conviction that he will **** somebody for a reason he can't explain.
He has no idea what he’s talking about.
She has no idea what he’s talking about.
He says he doesn’t believe in love. He believes it, and that he deserves it,
          but has never been shown it or felt it. He hasn’t given up
          but says that he has with a shrug.
She loves the way he shrugs her off. She loves to feel unimportant.
She says she doesn't believe in love and people assume she’s damaged
           after her divorce. She never loved him in the first place.
She spends her time alone splitting open tangerines and picking apart
           the slices one by one and then eats the rind.
He spends his time alone splitting open saturated teabags.
He has been stealing from his mother for five years.
She knows her son steals from her but doesn't want to confront him
          because she knows he has a drug problem and she hates him for it.
He thinks his daughter is weak.
She’s sad her daughter is ugly.
She’s comfortable being ugly because it means she’ll never be touched by a man again.
They tell people they were too busy to make that appointment.
They are alone all the time.

a friend posed the question
there is a first world
and there is a second world,
but where do you find the
second world?

and sadly i think i know the answer.
the second world lives is
the hidden shadows of the
first.

and is populated by....

.....those who live in the shells
of architect designed houses, with no power running
water,

..or worse live in cars or
couchsurf.

....it is those  pensioners who
exsist on tinned cat food
and  teabags re-used  
seven times.

....old people who wear their entire wardrobe in the winter
cold.

....children with bad teeth and chronic health issues
un-attended because they
can't afford a doctor

...it is the man,
who died the other day.
hit by a train,
while his children watched,
retrieving some dropped groceries,
he got from,
a food drive van.
...it was the first food
they would have had in 48hrs,
the child stated for reporters.

this .....
is the second world!!!
right here ....
mostly hidden from sight
not even reminded by sad
tv ads
only when abject utter tragedy
happens
do we see a glimpse
of the second worlder's
desperate plight.

A STUDENTS GIFT

Teaching as I do those younger then I
I am oft asked strange and wondrous questions
Some make me think ..re examine my ideas and thoughts
Some make me smile .. as I remember when I asked the same question, the same way

And some ... Confuse me

This is one of those

It was the end of class and most had gone , a few stragglers were chatting and I had stopped listening
"excuse me please" a so soft voice asked and I looked up into dark serious eyes chestnut hair framed the face of my most quiet student.

Sitting back I put down my pen and gave her my attention..This would be the first time we would speak in the 5 months since she began

"Can I help you with something?" I asked?

She looked down at the books she carried and said almost too softly to hear.

"How often may I use magic?Is it best just for Ritual and Ceremony?"

As I looked up into her face I realized that what I said now, here in this room would send her toward my Lady ...

or send her searching further.

Knowing this I chose my words carefully

"Ritual and Spells , Sabots and Circles all are places we call Power and Worship..But let me tell you how I use magic and perhaps it will help you see"

"Shall we begin at the beginning?" and smiling offered her a seat,

"This morning as I got up and lit a candle in the East window along with a small amount of morning incense , to salute the Dawn and The Lady

When I set the tea *** I stir in a chant of health and safety with the teabags and with each small dish placed before 7 prancing, sleek and furry babies comes a soft touch on each forehead and a Blessing to bring them home safely after their wanders,

My plants as I water them I touch the leaves and infuse through my touch the essence of life the phone rings and as I listen to a Brother or Sister
They know I hold focus rune stones and that I send them calm and caring thoughts to carry them through their hectic day.

Spells for safety and chants for health charms and symbols and song...

There is no hour no moment that I am not Witch
each step and breath is magic and through my practice
I pull that which is Power and Energy

To "save" magic , for Rituals and Sabots as though we might somehow ...run out ...to me it is if someone came and
said "Breath only for Ceremony and Rites"

It is beyond my reason to be a sometimes Witch ..

From my last thought at night to the first light of day

I am Witch ...

cooking , cleaning, shopping, crying ...

I am Witch

Magik is in the air I breathe and each action I take , granted after all these years most are second nature to me now.

But there was a time...not so long ago ...When as a serious ..very young ...Novice believed that magic was so special that it should only be used with great ceremony..

But now after all this time and with my Lady's gentle guidance I know every breath and heartbeat is a magical thing ..

a celebration ...a joyous affirmation.

So now through the eyes of time I have offered her my Way and I see the light in her eyes and I knew I had explained what I felt..and she had understood.

Magic..
Don't save it
Spend it
Shower your world ,
Enfold your life,
Wrap yourself in the Energy of the Universe...
And the Magic will Enfold, Protect , Nurture and Love you
and your Path will never be far from you.

Then, with only a smile and a nod she left, but Student and Mentor connected and I was able to pass my passion
forward and Lady willing one day she too will pass forward the Rapture

One student ...One small question..Thank you my Lady for sending me this sweet reminder of the Passion and Joy that is my life in your keeping

Solitaire Shadoewalker -2007@Copywrite

Bottoms of glasses, under ***** caps and vases. In pepper pots, though holes in socks, twixt blooming buds and fasteners. Kitchen’s sink; shades of pink, through willow-wood hearts and:
Behind Polaroid frames and flashbulb flays, measuring pixels and yards and:
In sewing thimbles, between knitting needles; gentle beetles, playing cards and:
Through laddered tights and telephone drawers, on written paper under boarded floors. On cotton shirts caked with dirt and in refuge sacks of reticence begirt. Cushion covers and shopping bags, through electrical wire and sodden rags. Under flower pots, inside sticky locks. In coffee mugs and china cups, Teabags and teaspoons and niches for tee lights. Bottle necks, glass jars, coin dish, cream jugs. Window sills, knife block, light bulbs, plugs. Plate stack, lotion ***, saucer, dust. Record slips, ornaments, lamp, clock. Table, chair: drink and sit around it.
I’ve hidden my heart almost everywhere and you still haven’t found it.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                           Camellia Sinensis Dancing

Anyone who bangs on about the nuances
And the complex properties of tea
Loose leaves, filtered water, thermometers
How a slurp is superior to a sip

The low-Prole vulgarity of teabags
Assessing the full body of the tea
Then teasing out the flavour of the tea
(Camellia Sinensis dancing a striptease?)

Is a barbarian.
                         Just pour me out
A good cuppa char from the old Brown Betty

Dottie has the made the
bed where Sammy slept,
bakes a cake, picks flowers
from the garden to put in
the small vase on the table.

Sammy has gone away
after his three day stay.

Willie’s asleep in bed,
his window open to catch
dawn birdsong, smell of
flowers, air’s heavy scent.

She pops a pill that Sammy
left; will help you sleep he
said, during their late evening
walk in the nearby woods,
as Willie recited his poetry.

She puts two teabags in
the ***, pours in water,
lets it stand, hot steam
coming out the spout.

They have the house
to themselves again,
no more having to keep
the sounds down, no
need to whisper anymore.

She pours the tea
into Willie’s cup,
adds milk, sugar and
stirs, pours tea for herself
with no milk, or sugar, sips
slow through pursed lips.

She climbs the stairs to
Willie’s room, teacup
and saucer on a small tray,
few biscuits and a pill.

She watches her brother
sleep, his head facing
the window, his arm
outside the duvet, his
hand open, a finger
pointing unwittingly
towards the pillow
where she had lain
the night before.

He breathes slowly out,
a gentle exhalation, no
snore, as she studies
him as he sleeps and
wonders what he thinks
or dreams; what poems
are born there, what
worldly wants or care.

She leaves the tea beside
the bed, she’ll not disturb
his dreams or thoughts;
she gives a final look and
goes downstairs; the pill it
seems has begun to work, she
has no worldly wants or cares.

Your lips taste like morning dew dripping off of a flower petal, storing all the sugary sweetness of a captured sunrise. Or, like a lightening bolt, making the hairs on my arms raise, then bow down to you when you kiss my neck with warmed lips. Or, like rusty spigot water, but I can't stop drinking you, it's like I'm living in a drought, and you're my only source of H2O. Before you, around 2, maybe 3 AM, teabags would bleed brown, unsweetened blood rivers down my cup, and my throat, would conjure a hiccup, that would burn my chest, like a 2,400 degrees kiln. Our hands, clank and clink, like we're two dishes in a soapy sink, but we know how to ****** ourselves correctly, so we don't discrete our cranny veins. My heart is like a beet, the vegetable, pumping purple dye in my veins, making them look spider-like, or like smudged pen-ink. That's what writer's veins consist of, the inky words they write with their ball-point-pens. The way you kiss my head, my lips, my cheek, my hand, you make the butterflies in my heart come alive, like fireflies trapped inside a jar. My collarbone, your wishbone, my knuckles, 10for10 simple bones to be kissed, my head, precious, leaning, my scalp, awaits to be felt by your friendly lips. When we're apart, I get motion sick from missing you. I will write about you, forever. I love you, and I don't need my language for loving you drenched in alcohol for my true feelings to show. I talk about happiness, like it's something to take off. Being happy, with you, is simple. I'm weirder than you, maybe weirder than what you want, but weirdly good am I at being what you want, all you want. I like when you compare me to impossible things, like the unsure feeling of whether you're having a heart attack or a heart attract. You're kind the point of seeing, I could look at your face all day long. I love it when you worry about making sense, but nobody really ever makes sense, and that's the beauty of being human. Your voice pulls summer bones from earthen graves, your voice is beautiful, so beautiful, it's my favorite song. I'm in plant with you, and my plant for you grows daily.
(k.m.m)

Plug in the kettle,
But in your soul,
With settled heart beats,
Your man is cold.
He loves to call bluff
And shakes your mind;
Poorer than paupers
You, fighting blind.
Plug in the kettle,
Put in again
Some assorted teabags
Of taste in men.
Dunk it in slowly,
But it all spews.
What's left for yourself
What can you do?
Fry your tastebuds in
Oil from your part,
Take out the teabag
From your boiled heart.

I want more, and I will lie no more.
Call me greedy; I don't care anymore.

I want more money. Who doesn't?
They are never enough. Never enough.
I am but a **** poor untalented peasant,
I just want to numb myself with more stuff.

With more money, I can buy more books.
The more pages I flipped, I lose myself more.
More money also means more toys that hooks
My inner child - he now knows freedom more.

I want more food. OM NOM NOM FOOD!
I hunger for simple gastronomical richness:
Multiple mint teabags to better calm my mood,
Serve with upsized servings of buttery tastiness.

Yet, even the simplest desires, Need. MONEY!
What's that you say? Learn to have less desires?
Let me write it down on my list; oh that's funny;
This long list, of desires, do you think it expires?

Nay, I say, for all my wants, shall grow evermore!
MORE! MORE! MORE!

The cat is being poisoned
My toenails are falling off
This house is haunted
And the fear is getting me down*

………..

Two children play with the hospital coffee machine, tearing open teabags and sprinkling the innards into pitchers of milk.
“This is how you tell fortunes.” The little girl says, watching the tea float.
“No it isn’t.” says the boy.
I want to go over and talk to them but my pyjamas have a bleach stain on the crotch that looks like I’ve had a *******. I am afternoon fog. My back is sweating.
I wheel myself over to the window with one of the hospital Bibles tucked between my knees. Inside the back cover someone has written:

THIS BOOK WAS MADE FOR SAVING
AND THAT’S JUST WHAT IT’LL DO
ONE OF THESE DAYS THIS BOOK
IS GONNA SAVE THE LIKES OF YOU

The kids behind me argue about fortunes. For a moment I let my head drop and my eyes close, but
**** **** terror ****
My cat is being poisoned,
And my toenails are falling off

John was too tall*
He should have called his mom more than once a year
He should have gone to his kid’s sports day
He shouldn’t have cheated on his wife
He should have gotten his haircut

Maybe then he wouldn’t have to pay his alimony check
Or eat Chinese takeout everyday
Or secretly steal teabags from his office

Maybe he would’ve bought her the necklace she wanted
Or taken them to the zoo like he promised
Maybe he would’ve graduated college
And backpacked through England like he wanted

But he didn’t
Because John was still to tall

When did should’ve, would’ve and couldn’t become the embodiment of futility that harbors your failures
Because we all would have, but we didn’t
And we all shouldn’t be stuck here, but we are

The air isn’t crisp for November
but it’s still soup and brown bread,
shivering **** on the terrace.

It’s dark at half four, but it’s still
not fast to throw my coat on.
Stopping and smacking the closed library’s door.

The rain’s hissing off the new tarmac
making clouds that my breath won’t.
But it’s still no sun, and old makeup washed off.

There’s no slush,
but there’s brown leaf sludge.
There’s ten thousand prospective students on campus.

There’s a panic. An anticipation of exams
and Christmas shopping.
But it’s still quiet nights and used teabags.

Nov 25 1991*


I just like to hear
the willow branches singing in the wind

I just like to watch
as the morning settles down and life begins

I just like to watch
As the Great Lake breezes blow across the shore

I just like to think
that you are somewhere standing just outside a door
with your bags packed and headed home to me

I just like to hear the kettle whistle
as I place two teabags in the ***
and forget there's only me

Tip the scales
pour it out
let the stale, cold tea
unclog the spout
chop the onion
grate the mouldy cheese
dip the bird in sauce
cover its knees
soak the bread
spread with jam
chop the tinned pork
and fry the spam
scrape the dish clean
smeard with custard
better on bananas
then red hot mustard.
fetch the fish
from the crowded tank
fry it, boil it, bake it
now its hair's gone lank
quick hide the fat from the duck
its oozing and spilling out
shove the teabags into the ***
before they gush out the spout.
which do you prefer?
pudding or pie?
how would you like it?
wet or completely dry!

Dipping his teabags over her,
                      as she whistled in delight.

Brewing for a while more,
    she could taste them better,

as they'd double-dipped
           for that just-made taste.

Little pleasures; When luxury becomes the norm, both the anticipation and the pleasure in little things become diminished. Lets put away our plastic teabags and start our value enhancement with a lovely *** of leaf tea.

thank god for tea
thank god for whistles and steam and milk and honey and mugs
thank god for teabags
and warmth and sweet and bitter and soft and sleep and mornings
thank god for kettles
and quiet and windows and pillows and jars and an absence of tears
thank god for tea
because i get cold
and my hands shake without something to hold
and my brain quakes when it isn't told something
anything to do
outside of itself so
thank god for tea
and grandmas and books and kittens and libraries
thank god for teapots
and sunsets and toothpaste and thermoses and treetops
thank god for soft chairs to sit in and sip
crisscross applesauce with a mug at your lips
because i get frightened
and i get cold
and if the only thing that's bold
in this house is this strong cup of tea
and not me
i'll take what i can get

don’t use a teapot

but evidently many do,

and cosy up together.

they don’t squish teabags, have leaves,

and stewing on the gas ring,

like mother, reducing it to

poison on my tongue.

i like the leaves to look at,

smell, like the small packet

we used to have, paper lined

in those days.

Kettles, hob rings, and rancid buttered things.
Teabags, eye bags, wishing I was dead.
*******, regret stains, killing me inside,
Fruit juice, footloose, do it all again.

The days were bleeding into nothingness,
seeping into each other like teabags left on the counter.
Each day I succumbed
to the hostility of my home nestled in your teeth.
I aspirated the saliva between your words-
pooling in your cheeks and dripping from your lips as if you were a man tasting his first food in weeks.
I stood there,
beneath you always,
with my backbone growing frail having never been used.
There came a day, though,
when my bones began to shift with a magnitude almost mistaken for an earthquake.
When my vertebrae found their nourishment in your toxins,
flourishing in the wake of a new beginning.

don’t use a teapot

but evidently many do,

and cosy up together.

they don’t squish teabags, have leaves,

and stewing on the gas ring,

like mother, reducing it to

poison on my tongue.

i like the leaves to look at,

smell, like the small packet

we used to have, paper lined

in those days.

i want to make a home with you.
i will make tools for you from my ribcage,
and i will trust your gentle hands not to break them.

i will dig my brown hands
into the deep dark earth.
i will place fingerprints along the foundation’s walls,
lining it up with kisses and touch
so that our house never forgets how
gentle and raw my love is for you.

i will sob like a lost doe,
and i will let the droplets of water
race down my cheeks and chin
like a waterfall onto the glass
of our windows.
i will wash them with my tears
and dry them with bandages,
as a reminder that the storm will come
but it will not be forever.

i will take pieces of you
and pieces of me
and plant them under elderberry bushes.

i will sweep the floor
with eyelashes i find on your cheeks
and the locks that swirl in your hairbrush.
no dust dare cross the boundary
of lover and lover.

i will look for you in every corner
and pray in tongues around the house,
blessing our space with more God
than anyone ever thought we could handle.
i will lay scripture on our bedsheets
and love God with the fervor that i love you.

we will dunk our teabags in
hot cups of universe and stars,
we will dance in the living room in our socks
and laugh so loudly that the paint on the walls can’t help
but crinkle with a grin.

in every universe, i will be yours.
in every universe, you will be mine.
in every universe, we will be home.