Tea Stall
Creaking
stall shelters against
the prickly rain, as
the swirling Assam invades our
senses.
Free
Though I haven’t slept a wink
In the past 36 hours
I still want to stay up
And see the wonder that we are
Our creations, our battle scars
Though there is so much to say
So much to tell
So much to write
I find my words deserting me
In face of a long, long plight
Even if it’s almost over
The ending within reach
Now more than ever
There is still doubt in me
And so I must continue to write
The only way I can actually be free.
Red Moon Tonight
The moon, aloft already
in the hazy sky to the south,
illuminates like a dim bulb, and yet
the tall canary grasses
in the fields next door shine
below a moody line of evergreen.
In the distance, a bull frog
echoes another, and a young girl,
so far away only the rising lilt of her voice
can be heard, asks a question in the dark.
There is no other sound, except the tires
of a faraway car as it rolls along the highway.
A mist rises up across the far acres,
and the coyotes begin to sing
in the woods just across the way.
this is space – #19
this is space
the gap between the lines
you are waiting for me to fill with some phenomenal words
that never come
this is space
the distance between my pen and my brain
and every year about this time
i write a poem like this
about this very space
this chasm of nothingness
this interlude of naught
this hollow slit of inconsistency
this
is
space
2017.
Prompt# 19Sunny side of dark forces at play
Those stars we reach for
stay in a dark hole, infundibular store, somewhere in galactic fantasy
sucked in, they die; blown up, they light our night-sky
the darkness we hide is our reality, the rest is our playful imagination that crawls, walks, runs and flies
set in a space digitalised by our mental keypad strokes
scrolled up, down and aligned from left to right, right to left and every which way on whole
a dimension for each thought, a revelation for each belief, a prayer for the unimaginable unknown
in this multidimensional mirror maze, where our eyes gaze at each other from every corner and space
we are left to die or live in waste
if we do not create something in haste as soon as we are taught that a comatose child is the star
that dropped into our lap when it is just our imagination worked up to a solid white
its dark falling on the blind eye, creation sets creatures against each other
you die, i live, i die, you live or we all die together and others take over
In this space we create for ourselves we accomodate many who have eaten into our space
and we eat them, kill them, raze them, overthrow, we create more and more emptiness in our imaginary play field
filling it up with plastic, concrete and the immovable, indestructible even by us
thus we lend our idea of immortality to such things who edge us out one by one
killing our creativity by replacing it with routine, mundane existence
that has lost its power to know only one good thing
how to occupy space and darken it by blocking the sun that stood for our collective gifts
our collective gift of throwing light on what we could be had we been atoms
atoms that weren’t afraid to draw heat, share heat, fire-up, light-up, burn, ablaze with blitzkreig creativity
and explode into billions of sub-atomic light-giving diamonds of brilliance
hard to stare at, but lighting up the path to get out through the dark hole from which stars escape at night
Hour 18-Tea
Grandma had her tea
Once at breakfast
Once around lunch time
Green tea
Steeped in her porcelain tea pot
With matching cups
I was invited sometimes
Sitting across from her
My tea weaker
with a spoon of sugar
Hers sweetened with saccharin pills
Mine lightened with milk
We would sip and talk
I felt grown up
Important, almost Victorian
Grandpa never joined us
He was a coffee man himself
But he set up the service for her
Boiled her water on the stove
Filled the pot for her
Added the bags
Their ritual twice a day
Every day
Later when they were gone
Mom and I had our own tea days
Earl Gray and Lemon Zinger
A cup in the microwave
Replaced the whistling kettle
Porcelain tea pots with matching cups
became decorations in the china cabinet
After Mom passed, it was just me
and soon the tea
Became coffee on the run
Sometimes I imagine sitting there
Gently holding the fragile tea cup
I can taste the milk
Hear Grandma’s laugh
Perhaps one day I will buy a box of green tea
Maybe pull out that whistling kettle
Let the tea steep in the Porcelain Teapot
Set out a fragile matching porcelain cup
And sip slowly
The way Grandma taught me
Outerspace
Scream!
You can’t be heard.
The vacant space surrounds you like a child in a womb.
It is never ending.
It is everywhere.
The quietness is so loud.
jj2017
When I Told Him
“I need space.”
He stepped back.
Farther and farther
Until he disappeared.
He didn’t understand
My need for inner space
Inner peace
Peace and quiet
Space. I need space.
Space for love, not
As distance between
I want to share and hold
To touch
To breathe and live.
Don’t Say The Final Frontier
That’s death
and the frontier neck and neck with death is
the soul
which flits off into other dimensions
if you’re in to that kind of thing
Space is just geography without the
Geo topography without the
Topo
Unnavigable via pitch, tilt, and yaw
Bereft of reference
The reason we haven’t met any
Aliens is because
Earth is a pre-contact indigenous people’s preserve
It’s a zoo here and folk poking the bear make
Crop circles and pick us up for a little look see
Then try to put us back where they found us
The space in my head where
Fantasies unfurl
Encompasses it all
With room to spare
The Eye
She looked at the eye
of the universe
so very close
that she hardly
blinked
for fear of
missing out
on its secrets.
But then, of course,
she had to blink,
as humans have the need to do so.
And when she did
moisten her scleras,
the universe responded.
It blinked back at her.
As she leaned closer
to get a better look
at what had just happened or
what she thought had happened,
she realized something.
She blinked.
The universe blinked.
What she thought she was observing
was actually observing her, too.
That’s when a small bunch
of the lush, long eyelashes
in the eye of the universe
began to pull themselves away from the lid,
away from the others.
But as she peered closer,
she saw that the moving bunch of eyelashes
were not eyelashes at all.
Rather, they were eight nimble legs
of a spider
stirring as it awakened from its nap.
How long had the spider been there?
How long was her nap?
Had the blinking disturbed this spider’s slumber?
The spider pulled herself up
in her gossamer spidery elegance
and began to walk
out of the rainbow projecting eye of the universe.
She did so without ever blinking or looking back.
The eye of the universe and the girl blinked simultaneously
as the spider climbed out into the starry night sky.
She would never know her grace had been observed,
she was indeed undisturbed.
Mary Gabis