Below are the next six poems from our recent Twitter poetry party.

Of Parasols and Scorpions

By @llbarkat, @doallas, @jejpoet, @mattpriour, @ERBKs, @mdgoodyear and @gyoung9751; a late entry or two by @SandraHeskaKing; a few retweets by @moondustwriter, @Laura_The_Wise, @TinaNguyen, @jesskristie, @CirclesRoundSun, @Julia_Hensley, @GPWriter, @rasmithii, @roseasho, @Sahrazad528 and @PoeticHeart34; two plaintive cries at having missed the jam by @meilbheag and @vnesdoly; and edited by @gyoung9751.

Renoir’s Parasol

Twirling her parasol,
she waited,
miming the manners
of the prettiest girl
in a Renoir painting.
Rub toes
in the sand
twirling, lost
Does Renoir
rub the sand
on his toes?
Does Neptune
twirl a parasol
in the face
of Pluto?
Love, it’s called. Look:
see it all around you;
deny it not.

I don’t deny it;
I love twirling;
I love you.

A Lack of Communication

Love called,
and nobody recorded
the message.
The message was itself
spun once
or twice, made lies.
Love sent an email and
used a new font
for every letter.
Find the font
missing its heart.

Those Wily Giraffes

Pluto’s love is a cave full
of bats and giraffes,
their necks bent low
below stalactites.
Caves I would spelunk,
tides I would ride,
glasses empty,
planets spin
for the love of you.
Tug tides let loose the hold
and look again in my glass.

In my looking glass
I never before saw the giraffe,
Striped and spotted, hiding a giraffe,
that glass, its long neck
so long the stem
so delicate,
a glass striped and spotted,
hiding a giraffe.
Can you hide a giraffe?
Can you hide a love
as delicate
and long as mine?

Tunes, moons, runes

Tunes about moons
and moons spinning to tunes
I find on the tombstone
faint runes
a rune traced against night
a tune braced against might
a rune lost in darkness,
in silence.
Can one tune a rune
that speaks of the ruins
of lives and their revival?

The Frog Princess

A vial waiting to burst with life,
The frog in a dress with a train,
how long she waits
for her sweet prince.
The train in a corset
with a vial of vodka,
once contained
in the ruins of a life.
I wouldn’t wait;
where’s the next/train?
He so green with envy,
croaking, croaking, croaking.

He sat among the ruins,
seeking love, finding envy
spinning stories of love
that were not of she
who denied him.
Green with Venus, red
with Mars, white with moon
and black with denial:
once courtin’,
now marryin’.
Is denial not a kind of ruin,
emptied of life?

An Ivy Train

An ivy train stuck
in the muck of train tracks:
Marry me, I said,
beneath the planets,
marry me on the tracks;
put me on ivy,
take me back.
How the green
contrasts the white,
the pure with the slime,
the colors of love
playing out in a swirl of veils.

The train tracks a vine,
embedded, entangled.
Slime tracks
slime miles,
embedded with memories
that slide away.
Veiled under the shadow
of death: a tangled bed,
trained, married,
the vine a track upon a wall,
veiled in green,
veiled in shadow.

Here is the next group of six poems taken from our recent Twitter poetry party. Somehow the contributions moved from love to an apocalypse of weather to the planets and then to Hamlet’s voicemail. And it makes a kind of odd sense.

Of Parasols and Scorpions 2

By @llbarkat, @doallas, @jejpoet, @mattpriour, @ERBKs, @mdgoodyear and @gyoung9751; a late entry or two by @SandraHeskaKing; a few retweets by @moondustwriter, @Laura_The_Wise, @TinaNguyen, @jesskristie, @CirclesRoundSun, @Julia_Hensley, @GPWriter, @rasmithii, @roseasho, @Sahrazad528 and @PoeticHeart34; two plaintive cries at having missed the jam by @meilbheag and @vnesdoly; and edited by @gyoung9751. (It takes a whole village to write a poem.)

First Things, Love

Make light of love -
it comes
it goes.
In the night there is you,
in the day there is you.
Love spins, a supernova
separating dark from light;
then weaving them
together in vibrant cloth.
Supernova love
makes music,
galaxy,
universe.
Lost, lonely covered
in dew and grass, I found
you at the morning light.

Recounting, Counting Love

Day light, too night
to call the lost;
daylight recounts
what’s past,
the pleasure of a moment.
And there is me
spinning through the hours
and being spun together
with you
in a joyful reel.

Recount stars, count tombs,
the assassins of my love
reeling now
through lost stars,
a galactic phonograph
spinning light and
day and night,
each spin an echo
of a night spent
in your arms.

And we dance and dance,
the grace of glowing stars.
In your arms,
my arms;
in your echo;
my voice,
in your dance,
my hands,
searching faces,
eyes, lips, mouths.

An Aria: Apocalypse of the Grave

In the night there is you,
in the daylight, too,
I search,
I call gravediggers,
I call assassins
I fill the air with arias,
arias of wind
arias of rain
arias of souls
in the funnels of the night
in the center of the hurricane,
me in the center of the tornado,
you, in the center of the aria,
us, spinning out of time.

I call thieves
I call harlots
called, into the dance
clutching hands
whirling round
the motion
the hands
spinning thieves
through galaxies.
All those digging
their own graves and
harvesting souls swirl
around you attempting
to shatter your resolve.
A storm, a tumult,
power beyond any human control
yet orchestrated
by that ancient song of the earth
and the sky.
I call back the motion,
too soon spent.

Drinking the Desert

I forget you in the desert,
I forget you in my arms.
I’m drinking desert and glass.
I drink glass and the sound
of your memory, of your hand
shatters in the silicon of the sand.
It’s the desert, I’m drinking: nothing.
She waited, thirsty for desert,
thirsty for him.
In my glass slipper, she said,
my toes slip, rub sweat against
the smooth sand,
melted clear.

The Planets Misalign

Jupiter shines behind the sun,
a spot of storm on its chin,
but the sun, she
always remembers,
a sun spot always reminds.

Does Mars drink the Mediterranean?
Does Jupiter drink the Seine?
Does Venus drink anything at all?
Twirling her galaxy,
she forgot she was waiting.

Neptune raises the Strait of Gibralter,
raises it straight, in toast.
Mars: his face is red with the heat
of the sun, and too much vodka.
Saturn has a Shirley Temple.

Neptune has his Ariel,
hair long and flowing. She
falls, floating past the shadow
of Pluto’s love, while he spins
ashamed into oblivion.

And for Lady Luna,
some wine and cheese.
The planet X is a comet
of ice and dark with no pull
for moons of its own.

And X is the door
marked with my memories
of you. Does Neptune
twirl a parasol
in the face of Pluto?

The Prince of Denmark is Not Available

And always there is the voicemail.
You have reached Poor Yorick.
Leave a message after the beep, alas.
Press one
to leave a message for the assassins.
Press two
to leave a message on my grave.
Press three
to know him well, Horatio.

Last week, seven of us (and a few lost souls who wandered in and promptly left, determined to stay lost) joined together for our Twitter poetry party. The prompts were all taken from The Voice of Robert Desnos: Selected Poems.

Parasols and scorpions are an odd combination or a title, but, well, you know how poetry is sometimes. It’ll get clearer as we go along. I think. Below are the first three poems and a quartet.

And more is to come.

Of Parasols and Scorpions

By @llbarkat, @doallas, @jejpoet, @mattpriour, @ERBKs, @mdgoodyear and @gyoung9751; a late entry or two by @SandraHeskaKing; a few retweets by @moondustwriter, @Laura_The_Wise, @TinaNguyen, @jesskristie, @CirclesRoundSun, @Julia_Hensley, @GPWriter, @rasmithii, @roseasho, @Sahrazad528 and @PoeticHeart34; two plaintive cries at having missed the jam by @meilbheag and @vnesdoly; and edited by @gyoung9751. (It takes a whole village to write a poem.)

Love, Falling

She falls for him.
You don’t write forests
with pens,
pistols with stars;
you don’t write love,
just fall
with words etched
in moonlight.

Night and day
the stars sing
murder in white forests
falling.
The phonographs sing
night and day
moon falling
day fallen
murdered love

In Paris, Falling

Songs not of grief
but like rain
falling in Paris.
Etch my heart
with soft rain,
phonograph spinning
Paris memories.

Sweet faces
mime the words
along the Seine.
Night will sing
and day
An old record
of love in Paris.

Eiffel lost
streets lost
faces lost
my wrinkled palms
an old record
crackling
recover memories.

Along the Seine
on the Ile de la Cite
take in the faces
smiling from the ramparts
of Notre Dame
Memories of pistols, voices;
Seine draining to sea,
Seine empty.

Spinning Seed

Begin
where I feel
my beginning
makes claim to hours,
spun together
with the woolen threads
of my end
like a seed falling to the earth
being split asunder
dying.
My woven end
is near the beginning
of hours,
voice empty,
seed unraveled to
time.

A Thunder of New Music: Quartet

1
A thunder of new music
rising, stolen
with kisses,
spread like seed.
I call thunder and music
I call kisses
and seeds split
I call
I call tornadoes and hurricanes
your furies my revenge
and do not answer.

2
Playing out in hours,
empty of your music
and with magic refrains
of the song older than time,
resurrected,
I call to me those lost in the fields,
sprouting like a funnel.

I call
I call
I call
I tornado,
trying to remember
the lost.

3
Playing out time
funnels of history,
magic lost
love lost
songs long forgotten,
I call to me
those lost in the fields.
I collect their stories.
I rewrite their ends.

4
You can have your merely angry wind.
I call volcanoes and earthquakes.
Now the game is on.
The lost fields
the music
the stories woven,
raveled
rewritten.
Tornado spins
and time, nova life,
nova love,
galaxy abandons me.

Below are four additional poems from Tuesday’s Twitter poetry party. The prompts for the jam all came from the play Richard II by Wiliam Shakespeare.

A Leopard’s Smile

By @llbarkat and @gyoung9751; edited by @gyoung9751.

Rubies, Red like Snow

Jewels of ice,
rubies red like
sunset snow,
rubies like dawn
rising.
Can the Countess
eat her red oysters,
pearls askance?

Sapphires like a Deep Sea

She reached for sapphires
like a deep sea, an ocean
jewelled in clouds of pearls.
Sapphires I’ll take,
if that’s your offer
sweet.
The pearls were flung
upon a beach of sapphires,
rounded specks
on a field of blue.
What kind of beach
shall we wish –
sapphire
ruby
emerald
pearl
a place where no grief
jewels the sand?

I Scooped the Pearls

I scooped the pearls,
the sapphires,
with enamelled spades
of pink and yellow;
pink and yellow scoops
drip pearls
drip pastel love
on empty sands.
All is uneven –
the sands
the scoops
the leopards
rushing
from the lions.
the leopards like
black stones, skimming
across a starlit sea,
black stones
upon the leopard’s back
the night he chases
hard.

She Walked Among the Sapphires

She walked among
the sapphires and pearls,
touching her breastplate
of lapis lazuli only once.
And streams uneven be
and stones and night,
closing in, leaving light
upon the jeweled beach.
And each to each
cry ruby silent
night
Lucy in the night sky,
with stars instead
of diamonds,
six stars,
perhaps seven,
nothing is plumb,
nothing is refracted
in a line.
Time bends
with mathematical
movement, flowing
unevenly
into a star stream.

Adieu. Exeunt all

Photograph: Spots by Kaiti Miss via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

It was a small but wildly enthusiastic group that met Tuesday night for the Twitter poetry party. Well, “group” might be a slight exaggeration. There were two of us. And we watched the prompts – lines from Richard II by William Shakespeare. Richard was the last of the main-line Plantagents on the throne of England. Shakespeare made him into something of a villain, but a lot of historians differ with that fictional portrayal. He was deposed by Henry of Bolingbroke, otherwise known as Henry IV; he’s believed to have starved to death while imprisoned at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire around 1400.

According to Wikipedia, the play was written about 1595 and has one of the most detailed and unusual performance histories of any play by Shakespeare. Records exist showing the play having been performed in 1595, 1601, 1607, 1631, 1680, 1719, 1738 and more. In the 20th century, actors who played the title role have included John Gielgud, Maurice Evans, and Ian Richardson, and by Derek Jacoby and Kevin Spacey (so far) in the 21st century.

Such is the source of the prompts for our December TweetSpeak Poetry party. This is the first of two posts.

The Leopard’s Smile

By @llbarkat and @gyoung9751; edited by @gyoung9751.

Tongue and Heart, Deaf

My tongue
is deaf
but for the sound
of your kiss.
Hasty I have been
to speak poetry
to your deaf heart;
to deep incision,
slander adds salt
like kisses lost
long.

A Leopard’s Smile

A leopard’s smile
through silent lips,
tamed by a kiss
for but a moment
of savannah sleep.
Sleep leopards,
on savannahs
dry and golden,
sleep.
Swift are the leopards
and swift the wind
that executes
my dreams.
Lightning strikes
with leopard stealth;
no one told me
lightning is
circular,
a lightning circle,
a flashing circle
surrounding
the leopard.
The lightning
speaks and wakes
from gentle sleep,
yet waking
with vengeful life.

Lancelot Speaks of Vengeance

Lancelot and Guinevere come
riding.
Ah, Lancelot,
you speak of vengeance.
Let us close our eyes instead
and sleep,
to sleep, perchance to wake;
to cry, perchance to baby.
Cradles gone
and sleep gone
and gentle night,
gentle knight,
withdrawn.
To wake, yes,
I would wake
in soft light
of your eyes.

A Child Stares in Sleep

A child stares in sleep,
lightly moving
through rhythms of night,
aching towards a dawn.
To sleep like a child,
dreamlike,
is to speak to angels.
A child sleeps
amid the unstrung woods,
the unwound harp.
In sleep the child
dreams the dawn,
aches for night
receding like
a voiceless harp.

Wind the harp,
string the child
to angels.
We carried the harp
into stringed mists,
winds in the woods,
to play for angels,
and carried mists
and carried woods
on backs unstrung
from time.
An instrument, cased,
Swaddled, hidden.
Times bides,
hiding its cunning.

The Hood I Always Wanted

Swaddled in time, hidden in
a child’s wood
where sleeps Red Riding,
Red, riding into the hood,
riding into the wood.
I cannot help
the riding
the red
the wood
the hood
I always want to wear

Six Winters Spent

Six winters spent
in ice and frozen air
bound by snow
chained by sleet.
Chained by red air,
six leopards bound
in snow, sleeting
through mist and time,
sleet made more sweet
by the presence
of your red
unspotted heart.

The six wait for the seventh,
stuck in a forgotten ice age,
How can I forget thee
and the ice we fell across
like angels?
The age of ice,
of ice aged in casks
and hidden within
a crevasse,
while snow angels
left an imprint
of frigid gossamer.

Can ice be aged
like wine;
can it seethe
in darkened glass?
Gossamer
visits sleep
in dreams,
in angel kisses,
gentle as the mist.
A gossamer kiss,
left beside a child,
dreaming.

Due to a last minute technical glitch, we moved the most recent poetry jam from our TweetSpeak site to TweetChat. It was similar but (for me, anyway) slower, then they came in batches, and it was one wild poetic free-for-all.

The topic was pie; all prompts were taken from the book Pie: 300 Tried and True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie. Here are the first seven poems from the pie-fest.

As Easy as Pie

By @memoriaarts, @llbarkat, @mattpriour, @SandraHeskaKing, @TchrEric, @mdgoodyear, @JoulesE, @KathleenOverby, @Jezamama, @gyoung9751, @arestlessheart, @moondustwriter, @MAXIDUS, @monicasharman and @portabellaprinc; edited by @gyoung9751.

With occasional retweets or comments by @Corbie77, @PoeticHeart34, @DarkHaikuMoon, @PurplePenning, @mxings, @omewan and @LawyerMommy

The Poetry Pie Snob

I’m a pie snob.
Unrepentant.
Unapologetic.
Unremorseful.
Un-pielike, in fact.
Pie poetry, poetry pie,
pick a peck of pickled
pentameter.
If a passion is pickled,
does it crunch
like a cherry pie with pits?
No, like a persimmon pie
That passions me not but
pickled pentameter
portends poetry, portends
passion, poetry, taste.
But pie is not for the refined,
and the baby has a knife
to cut the pickled pentameter.
There is poetry in pie and
money in every good thing.

Making Passion Pie

Whip me up some thick cream
until the peaks stiffen and curl.
Whip me up some passion,
cherry sweet;
whip me up a treat of you,
a passion of fruit mixed with
sugar, tart and sweet,
a pickled passion with
lemon zest. White
coconut flesh shaves in
the grater, toasts brown in
the toaster, a white curl
weighted, drooping over
a dark berry, like a
pit of cherry, core of apple,
tart of lemon, peel of banana:
pickled passion is more
like a cherry pie with no sugar.
Passionate cherry,
passionate berry,
passionate lemon:
tart lemon tarts
make for puckering;
puckered passion crust
zinged with vinegar lust;
fruits of passion heat up
the night, topped with ice cream,
like frozen heat unfreezing.
The whipped cream touched
her nose and she laughed,
cherry lips tasting life.

A Pie Pastoral

Give me life at pie’s pace,
slow pie, slice it slow,
savor its snow-like coconut,
a pastoral, a peaceful fork
stuck through to the crust.

Give me slow tines to rake
a golden crust, to find berry
sweet promise in a tin pan.
Excellent is flaky; thin is crusty;
The crust is everything, the flake
and bite at the bottom of cream.

You say the things
you needed to say,
the things hidden
beneath an opaque crust,
the dream congealed like
sweet meringue crusted golden.

The Season for Pie

It’s fall. Pumpkins abound,
a little spice, a little cream,
with the colored leaves.
Flakes of crust fall in piles
of crumbs, leading to that
quiet, silent, season.
And pie for a birthday instead
of cake, candles flickering
atop a crumbled crust.

Loving All Kinds of Pie

I like all sorts:
pies with nuts nut on top ,
apples with…
I love so much, I always
want something sweet,
licking the last crumb,
only done in private,
off the plate to my heart.
It’s been too long since
I’ve shared my pies.
Quick, give me a cherry pie;
I am in need of a sweet
and sour red night.

A Pie to Throw

And the shaving cream pie,
not to be forgotten, leaves
the clown’s face fresh and clean.
Yet wasting a pie in someone’s
face is criminal. The Boy Scout
throws pie with no crust except
its aluminum foil pan, a
pie-sized bullet casing, and
whipped cream tosoften the edges.
Take the store-bought crust out
of the freezer. No one will know
if you hide the wrapper.

I Have the Pie-Making Tools

What, do you think I have no
vocabulary of my own?
I have tines, and knives, and
a pastry cutter too. I can
expand and moisten all crack,
chipped dreams, rub tarnished
silverware as pie pans clutter
together on the shelf,
litter of art long forgotten.

Photograph: Small Pumpkin Pie by Peter Griffith, via Public Domain Pictures.

The final six poems from our recent Twitter poetry party are below. I believe this sets a record for the number of poems from a one-hour jam session – a total of 32 prompted by lines from The Republic of Tea.

Thanks to all of our 20 participants (including a couple who wandered in by accident).

Governments of Tea 7

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.

Tea Leaves Clues

If Miss Scarlett has a cup it’s
filled with coffee and she
drinks that by candlestick light.
She’ll forget her crush on
Professor Plum, which might
get him murdered.
Professor Plum took his tea in
the library, while Mrs. Peacock
took hers in the conservatory
with the lead pipe, or was it the
rope? No, the revolver.
Tea meant murder, turning the
harbor red; fragrant or not, the
victim’s destiny was manifest.
Murder would be more fragrant
under plum of cinnamon night.

Miss Scarlett and Professor Plum
were gone with the wind; Miss
White wore a uniform too short
for my taste but Colonel Mustard
did not seem to mind.
We lost the game but won the tea;
maybe next year.
I haven’t a clue how to play,
I haven’t a clue how to write,
I haven’t a clue where I am.
She read the tea leaves,
and called it fate.
He read the tea leaves,
and called it love.
Could any of us have a clue
without tea?

Dreams of Tea and Empire

Tea has always civilized
the untameable continents
on the surface of the cup.
With colonial boilers cooling,
and machinery intact, no crisis
was available to avert. Time for tea.
What is in the machinery
of destiny? Leaves, or simply strategy?
Now he sits, alone, cup in hand,
dreaming of empires that are no more.
But still he dreams.
And because he dreams,
he hopes, he lives,
he starts the journey new.

It all comes true in tea dreams

Hold me, cup your hands,
and I will dream, whispering
words of bliss, lips to ear,
lips to cup, warm to warm.

Hold me, cup in hands, and I
will dream. We will watch the
dream come true in enchantment
white, vanilla dreams.

Recipe: make this thing more
than a dream. Liven it up with tea,
any kind will do; imagination is,
too, essential.

I would climb into your cup,
if you would drink me down,
heartache and all,
heartache and dreams.

We have hidden behind leaves
since that first garden. Put a bag
of black tea in your hand;
carry it a thousand miles for me.

But now they comfort;
the leaves are modestly calm
when dreams are tired;
call it confession and leaves win.

Say it was for me,
say it was for you.
It all comes true
in tea dreams.

I spilled cinnamon tea

I spilled cinnamon tea and slept in fragrance;
I dreamed oceans of rest. Over my head,
cultivation, weeds like trees, sickle blades,
twenty one lost, gone while voices rise.
I swam in lychee blossom, green-leaf
wrapped against the currents.
I loved in warmth; I spread my fingers and
took hold of a blushing cup of you.
The tea twists my tongue and torques my mind.
How soon the cup is emptied,and the night.

The universe in a teacup

Someday, I will drink the universe
in a teacup and I will remember, yes
remember that a teacup large as the
universe holds all our dreams.

I would like to have tea with God,
our table set on top of the stars,
a cup filled to the brim,
a conversation face to face.

He would ask what I thought of
the story He had written
and I’d try not to edit His words.
Come back to me, one sip at a time.

A cup, a change of scenery, and
all the voices quiet down.
Now what was that you said?
A single sip; the restless busy fades.

Raspberry currants lapping upon
the sea of what used to be;
never again my sweet tea. A time
to discard, leaving the leaves cold.

Below are six more poems edited from our recent Twitter poetry party, all inspired and prompted by The Republic of Tea.

Governments of Tea 6

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.

                                                     (Photograph by Jessica McGuire)

What’s found in the cup

I wanted to play but was
restlessly checking the boiler
and gauges.
Must keep the steam contained.
Containing the steam retains the
flavor:
honey,
sugar,
milk,
mint,
lemon.
Can a cup be found that holds
only tea?

My cup holds only tea,
Unhoneyed,
Unsugared,
Unmilked,
Unminted,
Unlemoned.
Tea holds its place
in the space
given up
by the cup.
Tea only matters in so much as
what it stands for -the pausing – to
celebrate the ordinary.

A leaf floats

A leaf aloof floats on the surface
tension of a steaming cup,
memorializing the laziness of
apple-scented dreams.

Could the cup hold more,
could it brim with spice,
could it overflow with honey
and swirling leaves?

Brimming with love, dancing with
memories honey sweet, the water
is only tense about the edges. Dip
your finger below; find its serenity.

Swimming in Tea

The naughty leaf warms the palms,
swirl sthe juice and reads the news
while we catch glimpses of our
memories swirled in the bottom of
empty cups.
I swam in that lake of tea, a warm
lake, brimming with fragrance of
the East. Now the
teacups are washed and dried,
stacked neatly on the shelves
until we meet again to share a cup
of life. I drank in a lake of warm tea,
I loved in a warmth of thee.

Tea Deum

He take a name in vain
for the love of tea.
Father forgive me, for I am tea:
the pause, the confession, the
party that is joy in the morning,
repentance and mercy, secret grace
whispered, forgiveness given.
I wash my hands at this cup and
around your words.
Tea culpa.

The Commerce of Tea

Sell me your tea by the ship load and
I will love you a year’s worth of memories.
Fortunes like yours were sold down the river.
How much tea can we sell in our cabinet colony,
crammed like a psyche, soothed with cream?
How much tea can we sell, asked the business man?
How much tea can we sell in a year? Calculate that
not once but twice, walking up the side of our mountain.

For a ride up our mountain I would wait, silvered
Cup in hand. Tea leaves and tender hearts met
on the mountain. How much tea can we tax,
asked the tax man?
How much tea can we drink, was the reply.
The tax man grinned.
There was tea for sale under the ship’s sail
until taxed too much; then the taste was lost
and with it, the empire.

Empire, Tea and Destiny

The East Indian Trading Company
brought spices, tea and despair
to the Cape of Good Hope
and beyond.
The colonies opened their arms
to tea, that taste from home.
The colonies brewed their tea
in a harbor of revolt, a revolt
contained, at first, within a
bone china tea cup, so
impossibly light and elegant.
The Trading Company and all
these tea leaves had a history
of blood.
For tea, you see, was an empire,
a colony, a republic.
Servants brought tender cups
of indentured time hot to their
masters beneath the jacarandas
who toasted themselves
with tea and croquet, which
gave way to tea and crumpet.
But when tea is hot it carries me
across the continent like sultry
jasmine opening up like a flower.
At the end of my journey to find
the true, the mountain was my destiny
our destiny is tea, cinnamon spiced,
a destiny written in the stars of the
Southern Cross; from the cross to
the cape; from the cape to the port,
the great tea port called London.
I rode with destiny, a teacup in his hands,
destiny, told in the stars or the bottom
of a cup, swirling leaves in silver cups,
fragrant.

Here are five more poems from our recent Twitter poetry party, with the prompts taken from The Republic of Tea.

Governments of Tea 5

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.

(Photograph by L.L. Barkat)

The Music of Tea

Found three sips of
morning’s tea.
So cold,
like last night’s jazz.
Kettle starts whistling
to the beat; slow sax
background
while tea slowly steeps.
Jazz goes down
like so much sweet tea
brewed at boiling point ,
sipped slowly,
double dark, oversteeped
like a
beat not in sync.
try another tune, peppermint,
perhaps, or chamomile.
Gulp it down. Go to bed.

Drunk on Tea, Drunk on You

I got drunk on you,
drunk on you,
I did, yes I did.
I turned to tea, got
drunk on your tea
or the memory of our
making tea together
and all that we brewed
and steeped and
sipped and
swallowed;
you and me,
whispered secrets
between sips

(Photograph by Sandra Heska King)

The Flavors of Tea and Love

Lemon swirl with chocolate,
dreams of past love,
in a cup, the mixing of teas,
of me with a mint
of you with an orange blossom
of me.
Last night was a decanter
removed too soon, like
you from me.
Last night was restless,
real life invading dreams.
Sip the tea down,
soothing away the day,
green on green and
white on white, lemon rest,
less bite.
She sipped her tea, softly;
she tasted her tea, gently.

Tea and Africa

Rooibos brews love and Africa
and goes down warm, tastes
like home; add honey for comfort.
Rooibos, it’s called, skin, teeth,
bone enriched with every sip.
Rooibos, red bush, your leaves
bring a blush to my homesick
cheeks;
astringent leaf for sale on
bleached market shelves.

The Naughtiness of Tea

The naughtiness of tea:
now there’s something I
never thought about
before, I must confess.
I dream of a peaceful
peninsula, steeped in
true confession.
I secretly love the fear of
a screaming pot calling
me home to this,
to our rendezvous of
heat and water.

Restless, too, yes, I know
Restless, the naughtiness
in me graying the edges
around the day.
Restless was the night;
tea spiked, drinkers too
steeped.
Does naughty tea
stay out too late at night?
Does it dream of you
dancing near rivers,
under stars?

Naughty tea grows into trees,
never subdued or pruned at
the waist. Naughty tea streaked
through the trees; it needs
wringing, a confession like water
out of a tea bag.
Who put the spike in my cup?
Why am I drunk on tea?
This business, its naughtiness,
is what keeps it in business.
I reach for the cup,
I reach for the calm I need.

Chant to me in words
of apricot, peach, cranberry.
Chant to me like the
slow unwinding of Orion’s belt.

Here are three more poems from our recent Twitter poetry party on “The Republic of Tea.”

Governments of Tea 4

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.

The Orphans and Rebels of Tea

Who are the orphans of the families of
tea, the homeless tea, the teas alone,
the teas abused, the teas raised in
catholic schools by hard nuns doing
their best; the teas with rulers smashed
across their knuckles?
Homeless teas, he asks; no brands dare
we say. Are there black sheep among the
tea families? A rebellious blue tea or a
tea of vibrant orange standing out?

Not the rebels but
it is those orphans and widows of
tea for which we are to care. Do the
tea orphans wish they could be dried,
crushed,
steeped,
drunk
deep?
Is that the crowning achievement of
tea leaves?

A Universe of Tea, Diverse

Tea so good for earth, green it is.
Tea so good for the sky, white light
brews me the arm of Orion, the arm of
Perseus.
Did Orion clip leaves, send them through
time, to the water, to me?
Alone, Orion lays his head on a star, puts
jazz on Andromeda and spins his dreams.
Does Orion drink tea, or only Betelguese?
Orion uses a dipper, large, to sip his tea, but
drinks his Betelgeuse straight up.

Tea Like Jazz

How do I tweet tea? Let me steep the ways.
Call me any time; just not yesterday or
Tomorrow. I’ll hear your voice, taste your lips
Today, gather you into my tea drawer.
Would a tea by any other name steam as sweet?

Tweet me any time, steep me, play me
like a keyboard sax. Jazz and sweet tea: play
me all the way into the arms of the South.
The arms of the South call me like jazz
on an opal-blue morning.

Tea of white with scent of cherry, very light;
Steep the cherries in white of morning: scent
your dreams in dew of me, the ways of mothers
with babes who don’t sleep, lacking rest they seek
solace in a cup filled with leaves and dreams.

I will steep you.
Can you stand the steam rising like
mournful jazz?
Rising, rising, this steam, this tonic, this
chug-chug-gulp, this Louie in a cup.

I love this jazz, this buzz, from tea strong like
Irish Breakfast. African Red has its own beat
and dance, rising and mourning and singing
and weeping, the steam undulating with the
music, breaking her heart.

The mixing of teas, green with black, mint with
Orange, a recipe of improvisation, big, strong,
from the western cape of South Africa, Zululand,
perhaps, black tea on bass, green tea on the horn
and red tea on drums.

Louie met Mary Lou over a cup of tea,
their hands brushed past as she took the cup.
They danced to jazz, of course: Oversteeped,
understeeped, unsweet, sweet, the room swirls
among the steaming cups of leafed intoxication.

Those last sips go down like a melody ending.
The song of tea becomes a chant, a dirge,
a funeral march.
Impressario of jazz, what take you with your tea?
Who ever got drunk on tea? But we did, yes, we did.

Is it tea and jazz or tea and sympathy?
I’ll have whatever she’s having.

Here are six more poems from our recent Twitter poetry party 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 Twitter poetry party. 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?

This completes the series of poems from July’s Twitter poetry party 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.

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

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 Twitter poetry party. 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 Twitter poetry party, 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.

Here are the “final 5” – the last of the poems developed from our Twitter poetry party last week.

On the Butterfly’s Blue Wing 3

By @llbarkat, @mdgoodyear, @mxings, @SandraHeskaKing, @PoemsPrayers, @lorrie58, @LoveLifeLitGod, @gyoung9751, @memoriaarts, and @thegypsymama; edited by @gyoung9751.

The Buildings Themselves

The buildings themselves
a river of activity; a bedroom,
if you must, refreshing windows
of truth; the cafe
a tumult of dishes and pans.
A white tablecloth, polished
silver, empty wineglasses,
slender asparagus speared on
fine porcelain plates.
Slice and roast them,
sprinkle slivers on a plate.

Slivered silver, silvered slivers,
empty glances to fill empty
glasses. Silences without
wine are
always more dangerous.
Testosterone is the roast
that warms the plate,
slices silence
like dangerous wine.
I knew where the door
opened, but no more.

Whispers of Grace

Whispers of grace gently
brush against the curtain; the
faraway comes on the edge
of the curtain, pushed by
gentle breezes.
Your faraway comes in
on breezes of blue.
Near comes on the fringe of lace,
swaying by the open window.

I knew the door,
the faraway.
I knew you would come.
I waited at the edge of time
like a white curtain, trembling.
My faraway comes
from faraway, from
away far away until
I return to you.

My hand, quivering,
pulls the curtain aside,
embracing the night-filled air.
The light shines down on my
fingers, wrapping them in a mist
of moon and time and echoes
of what once was.
I hear you say,
I am a blossom in your courtyard.

In the glanced silence
I find silver confessions
dancing like moonlight
across the emeralded
screeds and hills of
faraway, wispy thoughts
and lacy memories of faraway
Let me confess: it is not true
I waited; I waited/for you.

Hidden Confessions

I know where
you hide the almonds,
where you hide confessions.
I know how to discern
the fire in your heart.
Someday, if the willow
stops her weeping,
if time opens the door,
I will bring you back;
I will feed you almonds
from a faraway time.

Summer blows warm,
it confesses our distance
from the sun is not what it was.
I yearned once, for the dark side
of the sun, the dark side of the sun
that burns cold, always burns,
a mute minister, dumb enough
in the darkness, the dark side
of the sun, filled with scarlett
ice cream, frozen. Tomorrow
I fly, running before the sun.

The Call of the Moon

With blue whispers and
lowered lashes, the greater
moon, the blue moon,
calls me back.
I am in a room with
empty glasses, half eaten
almonds and silver, although
I’m not sure
why the silver.

Yearning for the Night

I yearn for the night to extend
for the words, the poets,
for my lover, but the end
did come like almonds
crushed and blown away.
I knew I must be dreaming;
such are the trysts of a maid.
Now for the washing up.
But for what it is and what it was,
swallowed words buried alive,
I will go smiling, remembering
the yearning of the night.

Below are five additional poems developed from last Thursdy’s Twitter poetry party.

On the Butterfly’s Blue Wing 2

By @llbarkat, @mdgoodyear, @mxings, @SandraHeskaKing, @PoemsPrayers, @lorrie58, @LoveLifeLitGod, @gyoung9751, @memoriaarts, and @thegypsymama; edited by @gyoung9751.

A Rose Grows in an Ancient Wall

A rose grows in an ancient wall,
or maybe better surrounded by
21st century Snow Whites.
We can’t want for dwarves
plucking she loves me,
she loves me not
seven times seven.
Not one rose, not
one Snow White rose
plucks surety for me about
you.

There is life on the thorn if
you look close enough, thorn
pricked bleeding weeping seeing
she loves me he loves me not
seven times seven
or maybe the rose in its whiteness
loves me or maybe the night
or not asking he loves me,
he loves me not,
her garden will be bare,
a carpet of white.

Or stop walking, turn
around and around until
the world spins
seven times seven
and you
fall to one side, giddy, loopy,
sick,
shattered surety in the textured
fall as pink to gray to black.
I am sure, now, I know nothing
about roses; not one has lived.

You pluck truth from me
petal by petal
until I am left blushing
daisy bright cheeks
and not much else.
Pay my price; blush;
the roses/in the ancient walls
fear not exile.
What is ancient, but this cracked
concrete wall, stretching
with the seasons.

And then the wall laments a freedom not
known. Let’s go together, glide back,
lose ourselves in the wall of you and me.

Does This Music Love Me, Too?

And this music.
Does it love me too?
This harp, this fountain, this apple?
All are priests.
In the beginning, there was
a word and all these followed after,
flowing before me.

Or did you go to the back door
for the dogs, your whistle a quick
high pitch that draws them in?
A moment of recognition
before it flits away.
I, still calling names, am lost
in the wail of me and of thee.

Olive Shrubs, Olive Branches

Jasmine scented, our mail came,
the tendrils bound in blood,
wound tight round the post.
All blood is a Persian gift from God,
and olive shrubs and
brown postal boxes.
Let’s go as blood
brothers, to the olive shrubs;
let’s watch a tender night;
let’s be free
a lover and her poet.

What is loyal? What is free?
Poetry has no priest.
They have no we; we
have no they.
Nothing is ever free
for asking; everything has
a price enormously high.
You are loyal, you are free;
I see you in the olive shrubs,
calling yourself a poet.

No olive branch to
be found.
Find the olive branch
in me; pay my price.
It is light, almost free.
There is a price to your
blush and
I will pay it.

Old Wooden Words

Old wooden words sail on the sea,
still hoping for another moment
to glide back.
Kind is a word I have heard,
the only free word given away
without thought, before thinking,
released.
The only wrong words are no words
at all. Explain how separate is not
broken; I know, but tell me anyway,
kindly.
We are the opposite of Becket’s anxiety,
over flowing fools, two paths branching
and kindly drifting apart.
We speak of wrongs
together, break silence,
separate ourselves
into one love.

The Tryst of the Willow

Weave the willow into a tryst,
you the slender branch,
I the weeping leaves.
‘Tis said, “Speak the truth in love;”
sometimes to hear in love will do.

I hear in love the willow weeping;
I speak the truth of love to you.
A dangerous silence is shared
between us, waiting for water
and menus.

The willow says
smile, share almonds
instead of tears.
The weeping willow weeps for love,
for want of love, for love’s wants.

Love hews down the willow tree and
makes of it a fire.
What is more dangerous
asks the willow:
you, or poetry?

For last Thursday’s Twitter poetry party, 10 of us virtually assembled to participate in responding to prompts by @tspoetry. All of the prompts were taken from Mahmoud Darwish’s “The Butterfly”s Burden.” And the result was — rather surprising, at least for the editor. This group of poems required the least amount of editing of any of our jams to date. The first five poems are below.

On the Butterfly’s Blue Wing 1

By @llbarkat, @mdgoodyear, @mxings, @SandraHeskaKing, @PoemsPrayers, @lorrie58, @LoveLifeLitGod, @gyoung9751, @memoriaarts, and @thegypsymama; edited by @gyoung9751.

On the Butterfly’s Blue Wing

Time to walk, time to look
off the side of a blue bridge.
Time to ride memories
on the butterfly’s blue wing,
feminine soles to kiss
the toes of necessary
moments.
Loneliness is an aching breaking
parting of the ways
and the days drift into the dark
of American night
after night.

I hear the dog’s bark/beyond your arms,
I close my eyes,
forget the space between us.
So I sigh
and miss the deep, blue, black African sky.
Let there be no end
to the deep/to the blue
to Africa and starless skies.
The Southern cross calls
a haunting refrain
that draws me home
time and night and night again.

On the Bird’s Wing

Cut impossible down to imp,
cut the river trip short,
load the tubes back in the car,
call the kids out of the water.
On the birds wing I find myself
lost in the chores, far down
the river of dreams.
Fry me some eggs, don’t
change the hash or I’ll be lost.

Cut the wings/birds and chores,
cut the river from the
child, afflict the afternoon by
riding the mower along the shore,
bouncing over stones and
and nettles and nests hidden
in the tall reeds where the dry
ground cracks.

Until the water sings us clean,
treat our wounds with wet and cold.
My night is short like my breath
when I land in nettles,
slip into cracks and cannot
find the shore.
Unbind my wings,
throw me into the sky;
I know the way home.

Like every night, like
every train, like every
handful of change I find in
my pocket, like every penny,
I can be your good luck,
just pick me up, bend down to
where I am and pick me up.
Lincoln has wings too, until the
briny river washes him green, calcified

Silken Waves of Memory

Silken waves crash,
pockets of lost time
tracking away from memory.
Tired of memories early and late,
lessons that appear from nowhere.
Lessons precede tests,
tests precede jobs, jobs
precede life and war and time.
Can time hold in memory
the poetry of our days,
our cracked slips and musical
shreds? No, no. No lessons and
practicums, fewer sums, more
drums, little hums and flee behind
the fountain.
Tear petals from the memories.

Saxophone Sing Me Clean

Sing me clean
with your breath
with your voice deep
like the jazz moan
of a tarnished saxophone.
Write your music on a
shred of paper, bind it
on my foot.

Walk in my thoughts,
brassy saxophone;
briny song that longs to open
my secrets to the night.
Harps play in the distance,
polished souls whose voices
call deep unto deep and still
I am tarnished.

I know this tune.
The whole street knows it.
The sleepers roll and breath a
sigh that hums in harmony.
If I write a poem, will you let it
relieve you of your shirt, will
you let it undress your cares,
your unpolished soul?

The Confessional

A New Jersey Turnpike sunset
makes us fugitives; just as well
close the book, close the door,
grab a stool. Let’s play
confessional via!

You run and I run and we use
petals for mortar via, a
fugitive confessional caught in
the wall of thoughts swirling
apple red.

Grab a confession, bite a cry,
pluck an apple, put it on the
stool; this should be
enough for the priest.
Flee the confession; it is not real.

It is a show you have made for
the priest to pretend you do not
deserve exile. If I twirl the green-tailed
bird, will it give me an apple?
will it play the priest and listen to
my confession of love for you?

 Here are the final four poems from our poetry jam in honor of Barbies at Communion: and other poems by Marcus Goodyear.

The Barbie Poems 6

By @mdgoodyear, @papagoodyear, @llbarkat, @memoriaarts, @arestlessheart, @lauraboggess, @cascheller, @mattpriour, @PoemsPrayers, @KathleenOverby, @togetherforgood, @gyoung9751, @mmerubies, @jamesrls, @doallas, @Dancinbutterfly, @moondustwriter, @mxings, @Jezamama, @MarisaLopezzz, and @TchrEric; cameo appearances by @hiscrivener and @duane_scott; edited by @gyoung9751

Barbie and Her Pink Bible

I like pink
in petunias
dahlias, roses—
not so much
clinging to my body
in silks, linens, cottons.

I like pink too.
Not because
of Barbie but despite her,
to spite her,
my imperfect non-plastic self,
sporting her signature color.

Barbie would like my
2 pink Bibles
the best. I would be
her favorite.
Yet I thought Barbie preferred the
RSV — or was that the SUV?

Thou shalt not covet thy Barbie’s
King James ass.
Could Barbie one day be
the antichrist? Would the
antichrist wear pink? Or 666
on her high heeled shoe?

Barbie’s Medical Issues

In her 50s now, Barbie discovered
Arthritis. I would buy RA Barbie
with her crooked hands and
bad knees and pink bottles of NSAIDS;
I could relate to that.
Barbie had multiple personalities,
I guess. She did things every girl
wanted to do when she grew up.
Barbie is so ADHD. She cannot stick
to a single career. It is all pretend,
all real, all weird — us and them, she
and I, and him and her — trying on
this and that.

The Complexities of Barbie

Growing up, only boys in the
Neighborhood, brother and I,
learned more from the girls
with Barbie in their pockets
than we should know; poor boys
learning from pocket stuff.

Complex, these dolls
that make us dream
and give us roles to play
when we are young,
to grow old and receive
our scorn.

Barbie, like computers today,
could perhaps only be
as stupid as the
ones who formed her. Are we
embarrassed by our youth
once we know what is possible?

Maybe someday we will solve the
great mystery of Barbie. I wonder
what America would be like if she
had never existed. She is who you
want her to be; she is who I wanted to be,
to be rather than to appear.

Was Barbie a Poet? Two Views

Barbie could not spread the
fingers on her hands to grip a
pen – to type – to write. I do not
want to be her. Perfection.
Boredom.

Barbie never once wrote me a poem.
What made me think she ever loved
me? Yet I hear my daughter learning
love in her room, whispering sweet
nothings between bits of plastic.

Why do we fear the day when all
children learn this fabulous truth of
what lies under these clothes – bare
beauty, nothing to scare, only caress.
it is then that we have to admit the
truth of children growing up,
fabulous or not.

She drinks green tea, eats
hand-milled-floured scones, and
dreams of her youth at communion,
head first…in a coffee cup, giving voice
to something more beautiful than she
in a voice her own. We all learn through
other faces, other voices.

She did write.
She did pray.
She did love.
When we were young
we heard it all.