Here are six more poems from our recent TweetSpeak Poetry jam on Tea. And there are quite a few more to come.

Governments of Tea 3

By @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @SandraHeskaKing, @arestlessheart, @doallas, @cfraser83, @jezamama, @mattpriour, @togetherforgood, @MeganWillcome, @charsingleton, @TchrEric, @JennyTiner, @gyoung9751, @ThinkArtWorks, @thegypsymama, @PensieveRobin, @ElizabethEsther, @mxings, and @moondustwriter. Edited by @gyoung9751.

A Thousand Miles Away

I was a thousand miles away,
sipping orange with the Mandarins.
I was a thousand miles away from
home when I sat with him for my
first cup of tea, Tea made in a squat
ceramic pot.
I was a thousand miles away, and
in the unfamiliar morning
light fell into my cup, inviting the new.
I was a thousand miles through time,
past you, wishing for a return.
I was a thousand miles away tonight,
perhaps the sleepytime variety
wasn’t the best choice;
I am perhaps too still.
I was a thousand miles away in the
Stillness of steeping, seeping peace.
I was a thousand miles away, between
our cups, the contents of which
kept us close.
I was a thousand miles away
but still could feel your lips
sipping at my memory.
I was A thousand miles away while
a thousand cups were poured.
I was a thousand miles away, at
a thousand different tea parties,
sipping at the edges, hearing
the call home.
As I sip you, I lose my thoughts
a thousand miles away.

Drinking Tea

My tea is not fancy; it comes in a box
from a grocery shelf.
Some clerk stocked it; it was on sale
so I bought it to drink in
a slender class of splendor, or in
dragon pots with jade eyes,
three thousand years told in the
bottom of a cup. Or to allow the
tea maids squat their ceremony of
tea past wishing or sleeping or sipping.
Or to drink from the elephant pot
At Grandma’s house, part of her
collection, never pouring tea from
that ceramic trunk, of course, but still
drinking tea sweet and aromatic,
behind thin screens and scrolls
retelling history.
Perhaps I should drink my tea
in coffee mugs

Tea and the Nightingale

In the Far East, somewhere west of
the moon, a nightingale sings as she
waits, her tea steaming. She wishes
a wish of time, when nights end just
just like this, with a cup of tea and
poetry, a blending of sweet and
smooth with rhyme and verse, small
chips of love, porcelain sweet.

Tea, Madness and Alice

Away, away, awash in this sea of Pekoe
making my heart flitter, I find tea and
madness, madness and tea, just like
the story for King George III.
Tea. I am mad about tea. Haven’t you
Heard of the mad hatters and rabbits
and girls who shrink and go mad for tea?
I love my tea weak and iced; my coffee,
like my children, blonde and sweet.
The anti-purist father and daughter,
share tea and life surrounded by
stuffed friends for an afternoon
tea party.
I am not mad about tea but if I were
I would never tell you because that
would be crazy, like Sipping loss.
it is true: nothing makes me forget I
am mad about you.

Tea and White Rabbits

Because it is not coffee, because
they are chasing white rabbits,
I am mad, mad for my tea,
my honey-bee, my honey-tea
myhoneyed Alice growing wildly.
Set up the table; do a jig and stay
still within the pot this time, this tea,
my madness gone, except for thee.

Oh, a verse with mad hatters and
white rabbits, or was that white
hatters and mad rabbits?
Perhaps white habits and mad ratters.
Curiouser and curiouser those
white rabbits at the tea party, their
madness fragrant in a sea of tea,
honey sweet.

They were mad enough to drink it
in mugs, whatever they had at hand.
The cup crushed, the mug smashed,
she held hot tea in her hand.
The queen of hearts smashed her
tarts and poured out her tea like a
vein opened; the Hatter was mad, but
not over the tea, perhaps?

The blossoms make the delicate
jealousy rise, bubbles of air coaxed
from the water by the element’s
red heat. Is this thetea that makes
us mad or are we mad over the tea?
But this is a flavor too delicate for
rabbits. Careful of white rabbits:
such magic as they do undoes thee.

Hatters and peaches, creme and noon,
falling white rabbits trip, sip my dreams.
while chasing white rabbits to the party
of tea, she forgot to wear the hat.
she forgot her name was Mary Ann, a
name as old as this drink. Alice chased
the rabbit down that deep, deep hole
to find a cup of tea, the whisper of her soul

Tiny tea cups; crumpets and clotted cream,
a feast on lawn so green.
Five thousand rabbits jumped from the past
balancing teacups on their apricot hats.
Someone’s spiking their tea.
Temperatures rising, heat,
a summer night humid. Perhaps tea was
better left to autumn or winter weather?

The Hatter was mad, mad, mad but quick-
thinking, too, no doubt, as Alice did he save.

Five Thousand Years of Tea

As old as the drink, as young as her pigtails,
five thousand years, a girl’s first sip. Her
trembled hand and tumbled tea;
hope smashed in a china cup. Five
thousand years of leaves and steeping
and ceremony, a drink five thousand years
old, Egyptian,in the Nile Valley, perhaps,
first tea as first writing.
The universe within five thousand light years,
where light was born with the first cup of tea.
I poured the tea onto the ground, this drink
as old as the earth itself. I make no ceremony
for its age, only allowing it to endure in
its quiet way: in throats, down hearts.

Here are the next four poems from our recent poetry jam. The subject of tea takes a business, then political, and finally a personal, turn.

Governments of Tea

By @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @SandraHeskaKing, @arestlessheart, @doallas, @cfraser83, @jezamama, @mattpriour, @togetherforgood, @MeganWillcome, @charsingleton, @TchrEric, @JennyTiner, @gyoung9751, @ThinkArtWorks, @thegypsymama, @PensieveRobin, @ElizabethEsther, @mxings, and @moondustwriter. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Where the Leaves Grow

I wonder where these leaves grow,
I wonder what they look like when
they’re green. And then
dried
cured
crushed
baled
shipped
stored
sold
drunk,
sold drunk, sold stored, sold crushed
to souls torn by the long day.
Cheap tea.
High tea.
All tea.
And then
more tea, more baskets
brought down from the mountains,
the hillside air aromatic with
tea ceremonies.

Tea Cups

Tea steeps overnight in a pitcher,
a vacuum filled with brown or green
or yellow.
Sleeps well. Awakes strong.
And more to steep,
more color to drain,
more to chamomile nostalgia
poured into blossomed cups,
two blossoms cupped in the hand.
Gentle are the hands
that take me more and more
like tea takes the emptiness of old china
cups.
What is truth, he asked, but this cup
before me, a cheap steep here and now?
And what is tea, he asked, then took a
sip and breathed his last.

Tea Plantations

I hold a photograph, sepia,
of a plantation of tea. It is
still a fragrance in the dying light,
within the sips of another life,
another age more graceful than
my hurried shoes.
Before the republic, the colonies
stake their place, a thousand months
carving this wilderness into tea,
Plantation mint, black and spearmint
mix, rich in antioxidants,
sweetest when unsweetened.
The sound is not; stillness reigns on
sweet-tea summer porches
on warm-tea winter nights,
the same warm winter nights
you held the spring.
It was an empire of tea,
an empire built on tea
an empire afloat on sips of rose hips,
green and currants, peaceful flows.
Tea dumped in Boston harbor
sent the English home,
eventually.
The party of tea overthrew
the empire of tea.
A rebellion of tea created
a republic of tea.

A Stillness of Tea

Within the stillness, a further pleasure
sought: apres tea.
Apres tea, le deluge.
The water flows over bag and leaves
a mixture of honey and chamomile,
a sleepytime blend of flowers and
sweetness, a still pleasure,
a pleasure still, further and further.
A double-dipped bag, a further
pleasure, stillness waiting for
the weary leaves; home to more
tea, a stillness after the war,
bitterness softened by cream.
Within the silence, you;
within the sea, me;
between the two,
Earl Grey crème.
When I was a younger girl
my friend’s mother made
tea in a great big pot,
covered.
Time made the water strong.
The English way, no doubt.
A further pleasure: how could
I have known when I first chose?

Well, everyone brought a teacup filled with tea to our recent poetry jam. It was all about tea, or mostly all, and the prompts all came from The Republic of Tea: The Story of a Creation of a Business as Told Through the Personal Letters of Its Founders by Mel and Patricia Zeigler.

Not only was a lot of tea (figurative if not literal) drunk, we had a suped-up version of our TweetSpeak Poetry tool going, thanks to Matt Priour.

Twenty jammers participated, and a few others accidentally wandered in, mystified by what was happening on Twitter. Sometimes the jammers got mystified as well. But it was great fun.

And now for the first three poems.

Governments of Tea

By @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @SandraHeskaKing, @arestlessheart, @doallas, @cfraser83, @jezamama, @mattpriour, @togetherforgood, @MeganWillcome, @charsingleton, @TchrEric, @JennyTiner, @gyoung9751, @ThinkArtWorks, @thegypsymama, @PensieveRobin, @ElizabethEsther, @mxings, and @moondustwriter. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Cities and Hillsides of Tea

The water swirls with
currents of green and brown.
Transported, I imagine
great cities,
India’s jewel ,
China’s crown,
Great cities, small towns,
villages constructed of tea,
tea pouring across the
yellow plains.
I never drank tea
before China took me.
I imagine hands in India,
bent backs pulling leaves in
the heat of harvest.
I taste their work, their love.
In fields, tea leaves
glisten; gentle are the
hands upon them.
The leaves grow on
soft hillsides,
pounded by time and
hard labor.

A Team Party, Funny and Sublime

I asked her to coffee; she preferred tea;
Our hands brushed at the sugar
and she took me. The water takes the
pot, and the pot takes the tea, so
what of you, then, and what of me?

More to drink and more to pour, and more.
Even the dust of Lipton bags swells with
grace in the pot. Our tea party rages between
the funny and the sublime, with sugarless
biscuits sitting heavy on our stomachs.

The cup’s bottom holds bees’ treasure,
bees’ sticky sweet pleasure.
Words work their sting like the smart
from the end of the bee that sweetens
the tea, so make mine plain; the orange
blossoms sweetly enough.

Polite sandwiches make me sit straight,
remembering this is more than just
respite, a warm cup in my hands, One
pot of space so filled with orange spice
and verbena, whistling cool mint.

A Journey of Teacups

Two quarts of cups. How
many cups in a quart?
A journey of many cups,
through republics of tea
ancient and new.
A journey of cups,
a journey of sips,
a journey of warmth
crashing through me.
The journey of the cup
from my hand to yours
but a moment
lasting a thousand years,
a thousand days,
a thousand kisses in
one delicate-held breath,
a liquid warmth
redder than rubies.

True tea requires a journey
across land, across sea.
A journey of many cups
began with a single sip
there, so far from home,
alone, trying chopsticks for the
first time. The journey across
land done, the journey to the
mind begins, a journey through
republics of leaves, water high,
suns low over China, over India,
over sea. In search of true tea
Lady Grey joins Earl, sailing past
islands of ivory and cinnamon
to the voting booth of teas,
casting lots for red or green or
black orange pekoe, and instead
found eyes as deep as the sea.

This completes the series of poems from July’s poetry jam here at TweetSpeak Poetry. Too much has been going on, and this got pushed back. I’ve started the editing for the most recent poetry jam, held last tea and on a very different subject than robots – tea. I’ll have the first poems up this coming week.

All prompts for the Robotics poems were from the text of Robert Pinsky’s “Death and the Powers.”

Robotics in Verse 4

By @lorrie58, @togetherforgood, @llbarkat, @goung9751, @mdgoodyear, @PoemsPrayers, @lauraboggess, @jezamama, @duane_scott, @CherylSmith999, @SandraHeskaKing,@LoveLifeLitGod, @mattpriour, and @RLPreacher; edited by gyoung9751

Love Among the Robots

I am quantum,
I am your dream;
ardor blows my
circuit, a short
circuit of spinning
malfunction.
The smoke shoots
from my eyes and
head, pouring
burnt from
my mouth in
beams of light.
Sing to me in
your beautiful
eternal code,
universal system
of life.

I sing to thee
eternally copper,
eternally bright.
Hold me close
in copper love;
drink me in mercury;
take flight like
a startled dove
What is this
weirdness that
we do? What do
we name the new
thing that we speak
in circuits?

Warm chrome,warm
lips like a mirror
sun-kissed
I am your dream;
I am more and less
than I seem,
quantum leaps in
between.
My heart, the
color of graphite;
my silicon blood
disappears like
words in the wind.
The system may hold;
the center does not.
What system do
I use to hold you
closer?

My rusting heart
hovers near the
junkyard weirdness,
poking through wires,
hoping beyond hope
to find our lost poetry.
Is it silicon or
is it real? Silicon
ashes to ashes,
electirc dust to dust.
I yearn for a droplet
of water, a form of
real loved by a pretend
heart, cold and broken.

Robots Gaze at the Purple Moon

We once dreamed of walking on the moon;
now we know that the moon is not made of
blue cheese and men are merely men,
maybe even less.

Purple moon of chrome and nickel, hold me
close in copper love; drink me in mercury;
take flight like a startled dove. The man in the
purple moon man was standing by, casting his
line to catch the stars. Are the stars biting tonight?

I am lost among the words, purple moon
Above, machine clacking beneath my fingers,
lost in a purple fog of mindless metal. The moon,
that lesser sun, ebbs and flows with the sea, a
constant reminder to me that nothing stays the same.

Man in the moon, cast your reel, catch me,
fly me high above the clouds; let’s whisper
sweet nothings into the night. Mirrored moons,
piles and piles of me searching for crumbs of you in
dark corners of eternity.

Hey, diddle diddle, metal man with a fiddle,
fly me over the moon. Hey, man in the moon,
let’s dance from crater to crater; let’s watch the
sunrise together, let’s watch the melting moon
in silent dreams of purple.

The man in the moon and I will share coffee and
discuss our names and eternity and the color of fog.
At the end of purple night, moon man cast your line
and send me home. The night the moon melted; I was
drinking hot strong coffee with my metal lover.

The days of white bread and men walking on the
moon are passed. Now we must eat grains,
crushed whole, and find men who will stand.
White bread, white men, give me instead
a purpled moon.

Bread crumbs and moon vanish; how shall we find
the way? Fog the mirror with your voice and spell
my name. Piles and miles of mirrored moons
reflect through eternity. Speak my name from the
mirror where you found it, traced by my hand.

What are we but a faint breath on a cold glass, a
random bit in the stream of eternal consciousness.
What trace can we make without a name? Eternity
has no light; no light, no shore, no crashing. Squash
me flat to the mirror; press me into the eternity of you.

I do not want to forget my dirt, my dust, my name in
the fog of the mirror, the mirror, a glaze of silicon sand,
reflecting what the heart desires.
We can trace in the fog, faint against glass, then press
into each other’s consciousness.

Robots in the kitchen

Heartbroken, as compactor takes trash, crushing
Love, squashing metal lips. The system slowly
Crumbles, leaving broken bits of chrome to rust.
All its artifacts have long since turned to dust.
Steam dissipates, words disappear; intimate
memories never do.
Remember the old and real, and
the musky feel of the cast iron steel where
we cooked our meals of meat.

Robotic beauty

Beauty like a marble found in the grass,
like a flash of skin above the water,
like the smile of someone gazing into the
distance; beauty like familiar faces in the
timeline.
I am real, the robot said;
I do not need a name to prove it.

Robots name their dreams

A name in the reef, waving purple,
waving to thee. Your name is fungible
but your soul is stamped with the
make of he who is.
I plumbed eternity in the heart of a man,
a man of no name, who knew no name.
Even if you never heard my name, would
you not know I was real when you pressed
me to a silver mirror?
My name is written on the hands of the King;
the answer is in my dreams, I fear. If my
dreams hold the answers, I fear the questions.
Electronic dreams and generated reality have
become the only world so many know;
the dirt of life is fully foreign and forgotten.

Robotic artifacts

Footsteps so heavy there is no chance of
being lost, of being a name in the fog, miles
from shore where old houses light-warn us of
reefs. Is my love an artifact that no longer
crushes your heart?

The machine of things itself a dream,
all of seems to make me reel and fall.
An artifact bespeaks the blurring of the
separate spheres of art and facts.
Let our artifact be love.

Let our artifact be love? I am not
romantic. I dream of work and
home and you. I crave milk,
not diamonds, bread not roses:
life as it is and as it can be.

Robots have families, too

Foreign tongues and forgotten dreams:
we speak and act like circuits are wings.
But you will forget miles of memories and
melting moons and mirrors in my mind.
Draw the bath, light the candles;
the children are nestled all snug in their
beds, tucked in under sheets of metal.

TweetSpeak Poetry is joining the One Shot Wednesday fun at One Stop Poetry. We’ve chosen “Doubt Palace” by Bradley Moore, to feature as our (that’s the imperial “our”) collective contribution. Mr. Moore’s poetry blog is And the Other Thing Is. When he’s not writing poetry, he’s writing about business stuff at Shrinking the Camel.

One Shot Wednesday has been created by four poets — Lesley Moon, Adam Dustus, Brian Miller and Pete Marshall — to allow poets from all over the world to post a poem on any subject or theme each week. The contributions are as diverse as they are good. So check out One Stop Poetry — and enjoy Mr. Moore’s poem below.

Doubt Palace

By Bradley Moore

Friday evenings
In Doubt Palace,
We cut the floor just right -
Fantastic.
Shimmering gowns
and stained tuxedos,
Moving in circles,
forming lines
like shining deals
awaiting signature;
And there was
just enough champagne
to remind us
that these huddled accomplishments
would never make it
back through
the front gates
again.

If you are a tea drinker, chances are you have a favorite teacup or two. Here’s a poem about mine…

Teacup

I remember traveling
in his suitcase, white athletic
socks stuffed in my belly to keep
me from breaking, rocking ‘midst
clouds, and your hand’s first
touch bringing me to birth
on that wooden table,
and your lips.

Tomorrow night we’re having our poetry party at 9:30-10:30 pm EST. And we’re asking you to bring your tea cups (preferably filled with tea)— both virtually and literally. Which means (without spilling it on your keyboard!) we’d like you to drink the tea of your choice at the party, and tweet a photo of your favorite tea cup sometime during the proceedings.

We got the idea because our prompts will be taken from the book The Republic of Tea. And won’t it be fun to play show-and-tell while we write sweet tea poetry?

Poem reprinted from InsideOut: Poems. Photo of my favorite teacup, by Me.

Here are seven more poems in our “Robotics in Verse” series from the recent TweetSpeak poetry jam.

Robotics in Verse 3

By @lorrie58, @togetherforgood, @llbarkat, @goung9751, @mdgoodyear, @PoemsPrayers, @lauraboggess, @jezamama, @duane_scott, @CherylSmith999, @SandraHeskaKing,@LoveLifeLitGod, @mattpriour, and @RLPreacher; edited by gyoung9751

When Robots Sing

Hum and strum, and
play black keys with
both thumbs, one
tongue breaking the air,
laughing in code, singing
arias to metal father’s and
ghosts of metal fathers. I’ll
blink my aria to you in code.

Blink to me in code? Sing to
me in arias; feed me melted
love from your sweet hand.
Sing to me of metal mother’s
milk, frozen in time, frozen in
a terrible rhyme spit from
robots like shots of vodka
spilled cold at a binary bar.

Robots in Dark Woods

All of us were struck by the sudden
words of white robots in dark
woods, wandering lost. When
did robots become so human?
When did humans become so
electronic? Did the iPod melt into
my hand?
The machines always cough and
the flesh can do nothing; a once
useful body is but a shell; while
the soul and mind are wild with
life.

Robots in Love 1

For a robot o kiss a robot,
cold lips to cold lips, sends
chills down my spine. To hold
still in a stone embrace, a
disembodied voice calls across
the ether, prompting a deep
wash of algorithmic memory.
You make my metal cling, clang.

Keepyour stone lover with
arms of embracing metal.
I prefer flesh and blood and
rushing passion, life’s hot
breath, warm lips kiss, true
ardor never found in the
circuits.

Robots in Love – The Sequel

Refresh me with copper,
comfort me frozen, eternity of
eternities near the algorithms of
your heart. Reboot my poetry;
find the heart in me, hunt my
bright body on a moonlit night.
Oh my word, or my work, how
will I rise from this dirt when
my electron blood ceases to flirt?

Frozen like stone, we are left
alone, disembodied from our memories,
a frozen screen, a frozen lover.
I’m lost.
I was lost somewhere between
metal and ashes, my machine frozen,
my poetry rebooted.
Browsing your face, your eyes,
I am refreshed.

Remember your body,
remember this party,
remember the way we talk with
fingers and browsers and
bold algorithms.
Landscape flies from beneath
my feet; flesh machine grounds to
a hulking stop. Where will this soul
packet alight?

Remember closer; search me in circuit;
trail back, come ’round, remember nearer.
My lover needs a reboot; he has a virus.
He’s backed in, packed in, his words are
a racket, a packet of bits searching through
circuits and networks and fact checks.
Packed in between neurons not on my
own time, but wireless skin, a hub
where others break in.

I wonder where robots really fit in
the world of poetry? The system
doesn’t hold jack. It’s a broken
lamp with a dusty shade.

Whispers: The World Without Robots

You looked up to me but when
I fell from the moon you no longer
recognized me ; you thought me
hard and small.
Before, a a blanket was spread in
meadow still, covering sweet
whispers of binary thrill. My heart
rang from your whisper, even as
we remembered the danger
lurking there.

You poured me like milk into your
soul; you carried me in a hidden
pocket. I remember that milk
warm like breath, pouring like ardor,
whispering, whispering.

Drinking Tang

Let us go and drink some Tang,
Tang for brave men making giant
Leaps, yet we’re still thirsty.
Tang is best drunk cold,lips to
the rim, slurp.

The Body Weakens

That faithful old dog, my body,
grows weaker and fonder day by
day; I treasure it more for this, for
seeing its end approach.
Even the stongest granite and
oldest trees succumb to rot and
death; why should be believe our
machines fate will be different?

All the world’s a code and we are
just players; a code by any other
name–God, DNA, fate–sounds
defeat.
All the world’s a body, bones
coded copper bright.
The milk of my youth that nourished
my bones feeds my soul as I age.

To bed with thee; let the milk of
dreams calm you like wine, and
bring you peace
The days of Kool Aid have passed;
the days of wine are ripe.
Can we dance closer than this?
I left milk-white bread crumbs in a
trail beneath the moon.

Come to me soon.

It’s been a few days since I posted the first poems from our most recent poetry jam on Twitter. I have no excuse other than it’s been busy – a wedding, a funeral, a baptism, some travel, normal life. You know how it is.

Here are the next seven poems in the “Robotics in Verse” series. And there ar emore to come.

Robotics in Verse 2

By @lorrie58, @togetherforgood, @llbarkat, @goung9751, @mdgoodyear, @PoemsPrayers, @lauraboggess, @jezamama, @duane_scott, @CherylSmith999, @SandraHeskaKing,@LoveLifeLitGod, @mattpriour, and @RLPreacher; edited by gyoung9751

Dreams for Robots

Do flowers grow in electronic sets?
Do electronics flower in sets?
Suffering, a metallic echo of
electronic sets,
dream bits a flutter in pain.

Why can I not find a poem
in a robot?
What is it about metal and
conformity that leaves me
word-cold?

Can a robot suffer? Does a
robot feel pain? Can a robot
feel what it cannot perceive?
A robot can only dream. I dream
of R2D2 with the light brown hair.

I cannot write of metal screws,
Wires, hearts where fires do not
Burn. Perhaps the metal feels
too cold, the lack of beating
flesh uneasy.

Yet some of us go rogue,
forget commands, turn corners
we cannot dream. A robot’s dream
never gets off the ground,
confined to paths and flat commands.

The dream moves beyond the sets,
the dream of burning without fire,
seeking the hand that creates,
the mind that moves the hand.
Can I perceive what you do not feel?

Divided

Divided I type. Divided
I tweet. Divided I fall and
find only dusty sweet
dust at my toes.

I’m as cool as a robot, baby,
get that straight right now.
Don’t be crossin’ any of my
wires, man; hands off.

The Soul of a New Machine
(with apologies to Tracy Kidder)

There was was a soul of a
new machine,
a vibration metallic, a vibration
in blue, white hot copper.
Burn it down to copper, tin,
mercury; you’ll find no heart
within, no sonnet, no coupling.
Could there be the dream of
a new machine, a soul of
sweet dust?
Can a microchip hold love?

Can a thing without heart live?
A twisting of wires, copper
Meeting, maybe we’re more
alike than different,
robot and I, going through the
motions.
It is not the dust i fear,
the division of mind and
body. No, I fear the cold
metal clank of loss in
this machine.

The ghost in the machine
gives the imitation of life.
Your spirit can not be
programmed Deus ex
machina – God from the
machine. How can I see
God from the machine of
my flesh and bones? My refusal
to show fear, to suffer, to feel
compassion–this is the oil for the
machine, my body without a ghost.

Robotic Poetry

With a burning heart he
vanished into the sunset,
just one cog in this vast
machine turning mindlessly,
vanishing,
lost.
No matter the work,
no matter the rage,
hell’s hand basket warns
“error on page” in a
couplet so drab that we
fall off the page.
The burning heart of a robot is
a microchip, a couplet of
bits and silicon sonnets.

Robotic Lightning

I watch the metallic lightning,
matched by the lightning liquid
fire I drink.
Lightning flashes this metal
heart, blanches at the heat.
What I love in you,
gentle hands of flesh,
heart of flesh, none of this
harsh and cold coffee-like
oil, your flesh a wretched
waste, reduced to this metal
hull, a shell, where once a
flame furled high.

I conspire with white hot
Vibrations to stealth-penetrate
your heart, hot to touch, flame
red and yellow around the
edges, a hot flash in a hollow
heart. Thunder roars outside my
window but fire burns
inside a robot’s heart, hollow,
wired, sets of green and
yellow and black twine of
plastic and copper and
memory of heat a flash of
hot air on a face.

What’s Left After?

I watch the flame consume,
flicker its dance before my
eyes, bones into dust, alloy
melting, an electronic flame
of electronic love.

What’s left after fire meets
metal, the drip, dripping of
liquid? What’s left of me when
fire burns, stinking of ash?
What’s left after metal meets flesh?

The ash of an ash,
the death of a quest,
ash grey like tin ghosts
clanking across a moonlit
night.

Tears flow at what can not be
Held, fire tears at what can not be
Contained. Heart? The robot feels
nothing but green and black and
yellow.

The bomb squad deserves
to clip and swallow when they cut.
brittle bones of metal music
Save the hollow, stifle the fire;
there’s a ghost in tin embers.

A ghost writing in basic,
laughing in code,
stirring the ashes,
kindling the flame,
touching the silver lips.

Cool touch, hard thoughts,
who is at risk?
I refuse to show my fear,
wrap heart chills in bodies
without dust, toes.

The Children of Robots

Across the floor, the electronic
gadget does his dance, scaring
robotic dog and cat and child.
Is that robot someone’s child;
was it ever; can it have died
into this from flesh and blood?
On the phone my metal father,
speaks in my ears, across
the air, ghosting through walls.
Touch, I need to touch; regard
not my tin, my copper tarnished
black, my silver dross.
How can I see eternity from
such finity?

I can see your reflection in me,
a reflection of silver metal,
white against the dark night, as
we motor across moonlit moors,
whirring our lighted vibrations.

At last Tuesday’s poetry jam on Twitter, all poetic prompts were from Robert Pinsky’s Death and the Powers. Fourteen of us gathered together on Twitter (and at the “well” at TweetSpeak Poetry) and rhapsodized about – robots, among other things.

Here are the first two of the poems devloped from the jam.

Robotics in Verse

By @lorrie58, @togetherforgood, @llbarkat, @goung9751, @mdgoodyear, @PoemsPrayers, @lauraboggess, @jezamama, @duane_scott, @CherylSmith999, @SandraHeskaKing,@LoveLifeLitGod, @mattpriour, and @RLPreacher; edited by gyoung9751.

Looks Like We’ve Got Robots

Looks like we’ve got robots.
Ooh, robots. Maybe I should get
my boys down here to help me out.
Ground control to robot.
Ground control to robot.

Robots dust cobwebs before the
party; eat the popcorn. I don’t
want to be a robot all automated,
controlled with a switch, dancing
metallic dances metallic sheen of
metal, whirring of gears, gears
grinding slowly into motion.
Maybe I can remember how to do
this thin.

Command me
like your favorite robot;
I might work for roses
if you dance.
But if you dance, would that
be a ritual performance for
command or a command
performance for a ritual?

Failure is not an Option

The teaspoon tray was assembled by
Command, the only thing it could do.
Command is struggling today.
Switching to manual override.

The system, the system has failed yet again.
Even if failure is not an option,
it is still a metallic echo, not a repeat, an echo.
thundering gray against blue metal.

The command is repeating itself.
Danger, Will Robinson.
Command has left us in
robotic arrears
I, Robot, said Asimov;
I, Isaac, said the robot.

When is data a dream; when do bits
become literature?
I was always a fan of Data on StarTrek
with his greenish skin and longing to
be human. Comprehension begins
when the echo ends.

How shall I show/that I am frightened?
Comprehend to grab with the hand,
flesh or metal or the echo, the order, the
other wires like flowers growing behind
my electronic sets. Comprehension is not
understanding; an echo is not a big bang

I do not understand;
I just do not understand.

You see your young daughter playing with her Barbie dolls in church while communion is being served, and the result is a poem. You read an article about a super-collider, and a poem results (for Mother’s Day, no less). You’re cutting your lawn that’s browning in the Texas heat, and a poem results.

Welcome to Barbies at Communion: and other poems. And welcome to Marcus Goodyear.

Marcus is the Senior Editor for Foundations for Laity Renewal, which was founded by the H.E. Butt Foundation to “renew society by renewing the church.” You find most of his editing and writing work at The High Calling, The High Calling Blogs and Christianity Today’s Faith in the Workplace. He also blogs at Good Word Editing.

And you find it in his poems.

I won’t be coy. I loved Barbies at Communion. It’s about the daily, ordinary things (the super-collifer notwithstanding), and it’s because Marcus sees the poetry in the daily, ordinary things.

So Marcus took some time to talk on the phone and through email, to answer some questions I had. And he graciously responded, providing more details and insights into his own work and poetry in general.

Read the interview, and then click here to the post on my blog for an opportunity to receive a free copy of Barbies at Communion.

I have to know about the origin of the super-collider poem. And what your wife thought of it as a Mother’s Day poem.

Oh yeah, the super-collider poem. I’ve always had an amateur’s fascination with science and quantum physics. (In high school I won the state science fair in Mathematics, oddly enough.) Anyway. These days, my interest in science is limited to Nova, science fiction, and science magazines. That poem was inspired in part by an article in Technology Review from MIT.

My wife liked it, I think. It’s not really romantic, but it is kind of fun. Mother’s Day isn’t about romance, anyway. Besides. She’s used to me writing weird poems for her. One Valentine’s Day, I wrote her a sonnet about gecko toes and the van der waals force. Another time, I wrote her one about zombies. Thankfully, she tolerates my weirdness.

Where did you find a love for poetry? It’s not a “typical” (I almost said “normal”) thing these days.

About 10 years ago I was teaching high school English by day and attending grad school at night. I remember struggling through Keats’ poem “Lamia” over my lunch break one day. I had to write a two-page paper about this poem for class that evening, and I couldn’t figure out what it was about. I couldn’t find the answer

Then something just clicked. The poem didn’t have an answer. It was just an elaborate word game (about a snake woman). I still like Keats to this day, though I prefer other poems of his like the “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” His letters are cool, too.

How did you come to write poetry?

I had to teach students to read it. To make that more fun, I perversely decided that the students should try to write some too. It was really a tricky way to get them thinking about rhetorical techniques.

Through all of the crazy assignments–from the Ekphrasis poem to the N+7 poems to the traditional haikus–I had a policy that I would never assign something that I couldn’t do myself. Most of the time, this meant that I completed all of the assignments that I asked my students to complete. Sometimes, I would let them grade me. It was very scary. High school students don’t lie.

Tell us again about reading Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” on Brooklyn Bridge. New York is a radically different place – at least physically – than it was in Whitman’s day. Does the poem still resonate?

I love that poem. The city has grown, of course, but it still has the same heart. It still has the same complexity. Whitman’s poem anticipates change, and embraces it. In that poem–and people should just go read it out loud to themselves–he talks about being alive in New York. That still applies.

He talks about New York being filled with people. That still applies. And the river flowing around Manhattan. That still flows.

He says, I lived here. I walked here. I rode a ferry over these waters. I swam in them. All of the changes that have happened since Whitman’s New York are superficial when compared to the one constant. People are still resolutely human.

Someday, I hope to go back to Brooklyn Bridge and read the poem aloud again while people walk by and cars drive underneath me and the boats sail underneath them. I love that poem.

The title poem for Barbies at Communion is about your daughter playing with her dolls during a church service. How did you make the connection from that to the poem? What was the spark (assuming there was one)?

For me a poem is somewhere between image and argument and story and metaphor. Sometimes I have trouble letting go of an image that has bothered me–like the image of communion with those naked dolls. As a father, I felt anxiety about my daughter in that instance. Was it okay for her to be a kid during communion? Was it okay for the naked dolls to be, well, naked? Did it bother anyone else around us? Should it bother me as much as it did?

All of that anxiety needed an outlet. The poem doesn’t really answer the problem except to embrace my daughter’s innocence. She doesn’t care about propriety because she doesn’t understand what it means to be naked. Neither did Eve before the fall. And what is Communion except a chance to reconnect with God, to find our own innocence again through the grace and sacrifice of Jesus?

So the spark, in a literal sense, was the event itself. There were Barbies at communion on Sunday, and I didn’t know what to do with them. The poem helped me think it through.

The poems in Barbies are about the stuff of everyday life – children playing, mowing the grass (even if it’s dead), stuff stored in the attic. This isn’t the poetry of academia, which seems to dominate (some might say stifle) contemporary poetry. What is it about the everyday that appeals to you?

It’s where I live! I need my life to have meaning today, not next year, not 10 years from now, not in retrospect while I’m breathing my last. If I can’t find God in the ordinary places of life, either I’m not looking hard enough or he’s not nearly as approachable as I need him to be.

This is a paradox too. God appears in all the ordinary places, burning bushes, naked Barbies, plumbing disasters. But when he does, those places become holy. Moses had to take his shoes off. That’s one reason why the formal-ness of poetry seems fitting to these images. Poetry is very formal. It’s a way of taking my shoes off and showing respect to God when I catch glimpses of him.

I wouldn’t come down too hard on Academia. They do good work. They have a lot of pressures. They need publication credits. They need to fill their journals with names that will make them look impressive. Like any profession, it’s a community of its own, with rules and relationships and networking. As someone writing poetry outside of Academia, I can feel like I’m not part of that community, but that’s really just a call to suck it up and send out more work (which I don’t do often enough because I don’t like rejection).

What I personally find so appealing about the poems of Barbies is the concrete language. Tell us a bit about your writing background – and when was it you decided you were a writer? And what’s your education background?

I was a foreign exchange student to Germany during high school, but I didn’t speak German. Pretty strange decision. I’m a talkative person, though, so I had all these words building up inside with no way to share them. That’s really when I started writing.

When I got back to the US, I took an Independent Study Mentorship under Max Lucado. He was the minister at my church, and he wasn’t quite the publishing force that he became. The youth minister ended up working with me most of the time, but it was transformational for me to have someone like Max say, “Yeah, you’re a writer.”

Now, do you really want to know where I went to school? I earned a BA in English from Texas A&M University and an MA in English from UTSA.

How did you come to Foundations for Laity Renewal?

It’s all in who you know. They were looking for an editor, so they contacted Max’s personal editor. She has been a long friend of my family and my wife’s family. She thought of me and gave me a call on President’s Day 2005. I don’t normally remember dates like that, but this one stuck. At the time, I was looking to move to a new school, change things up a bit in my job so I wouldn’t get stale. It seemed natural to cast the net a little wider and send an application to Laity Renewal. A few months later, we moved to Kerrville where Laity Renewal is headquartered.

Tell us a bit about what it is and what it does.

This sounds cheeky, but we really are all about laity renewal. That’s our primary philosophy–renewing individuals, so they can be agents of renewal in their families and workplaces, so those small groups can be agents of renewal in their communities.

We work toward this philosophical goal through various programs–youth camp, family camp, free camps, Laity Lodge retreat center, and of course the High Calling of Our Daily Work radio program and TheHighCalling.org (which includes HighCallingBlogs.com).

And how did poetry come to be one of the features at the High Calling Blogs?

Blame L.L. Barkat. She called me up one day and said, “I want to try this poetry thing.” I was a little nervous about it, and remember saying, “Nobody cares about poetry.” It’s all part of this self-loathing problem I have. But L.L. can be very convincing. She got me to agree to a test period, and it’s been very helpful in building community.

In some ways, poetry has been historically important to Laity Renewal. When you come out to Laity Lodge in the Fall, Glynn, you’ll see poetry everywhere, hidden on bathroom tiles, on stones in the fountain, on placards in the garden, carved into beams in the ceiling. Poetry is really part of the architecture of the place.

So – what’s next? Another book of poetry? Or other things you’re working on?

I just keep writing poems and stories. I’ve got ideas for another novel. I’m querying some secular agents. And I’m working with you and L. L. on the game at TweetSpeakPoetry.com. I have a lot of high hopes for that project.