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.