The Way of Tea

Ceremony wouldn’t be
Proud of how I took my tea
Gulping gasping grasping
Reading leaves in light of the dark
Sanctuary stolen by twilight’s time
Beggar-made
Exhaustion knows no end

No, friend — never befriend
The enemy
The proof — look at me
Taking tea
Desperate degraded dying
The decades defaulting me
Standing on ceremony

In Our Fifties

Our chartreuse-colored love

The ugly chair now, that we don’t wish to sit in or admit brought comfort, respite

Nor will we throw it away

We mourn it in the kitchen like a death
Seemingly forever, while surrounded with casseroles of comfort food brought to us by well-meaning “friends”

We watch it as an epic film of someone else’s life
Sitting in the dark, screaming at the screen, warning of their err, fall from grace, then trauma

We escape it with our wanderlust-filled travels near and far
Photographing nature, plus wild wildlife who in-turn, chase us as we sleep, pseudo-nightmares that wake us at 3am

We do this
You, there, and me, here

Silk and brocade-covered hardwood frames we were and we are
Camaraderie and adventure that was to have brought us peace
Closure to the aching

What color was it initially, before the fade, we ask ourselves over and over

What we know for certain — it was an heirloom love

Before the spit up and sweaty workaday clothes soiled it
Before the pained animals in us tore it to shreds
Before our childhood loneliness, unresolved, relegated us to our corners in our fifties — upper lips bloodied, both of us

Walking attachment disorders, detached by default, from each other
All in one, single day

Eventually, we go to the curb with this shredded chartreuse thing

Pack up and move far away

Looking from the rear-view mirror at what was, we draw others’ ire as we drive too-slow down that road

It is always dusty Summer in our hearts’ mind’s eye

Evermore

You were dangerous to us
“possessing, and full of”
Your “me” mentality
Experimenting with our experience
Traumatizing our time
Leaving behind
Ghosted train tracks
Coming ahead
Haunting this road
Moreover,
The unhallowed years-
Unending and never over
What peace?
What peace there might have been

We and I

How many closets did we crawl into

How many midnights awakened

By an ever-fixed, screaming star

And I, another day older

No closer still, no more able

To take us away from the chaos

Carelessly strewn about the sky

We were forced to live under

But there we were

Closet door and mouths closed tight

Waiting for morning to come

And I, another day older

Stay