Green Tea

Green Tea

The polkadot pattern of gum on the pavement
Matches the morsecode message
of the stars.
Sometimes she gazes, trying to interpret
Their small silly whispers
in the seamless sky.
She clutches a mug of strange tasting tea
Holds it to her chest...
It's warm but not hot
And her feverish fingers
are thoughts,
Wondering in her mildewy-mania
If he'd be warm too.
If she could touch his skin,
The porcelain-pallor of his cheek.
Would it slide through her shivering flesh.
And maybe, maybe, maybe warm her?

Bouncing ideas back and forth, exchanging
signs and places changing.
She could be contemplating some kind
of philosophical or theological conundrum.
Perhaps dallying over some Nobel Prize theorum.
Except it's just the stars and the green tea.

Over coffee it is different.

Over coffee it is different.
It is bitter.
Tie up your fantasies girl! Tie them!
Bind them! Black bag them
and fling them in the river!
Or perhaps the ocean?
Though that may wash them back to shore...
At least a river
will carry them away.
She shuts a metal door down on those flighty feelings.
Those deceptive thoughts. A dual addict.

The rictus moon, curled, as if trying to find a
womb in the sky,
smiles or sneers. Which?
She suggests she sleep on it.
Or call him. Tell him
that she would like to melt
Like Turandot.
The chinese maiden of ice.
He is no Calaf...
If he was... then she is no renown beauty,
no divine daughter.
Nor even the slave he favoured with a smile.
This boy, his smile means less here
Than in fairytale.

That's all the stars shuffle
with their dit-dit-dat descriptions
of desperate demons, dangerous remedies...
Their message: meaningless.
Matched on the earth by man's spat out dirt.
She could be dwelling on that.
Instead she thinks on him.
The glittering ghost in the shell
as she drinks her green tea.

And then sleep.