Tea Ceremony

Half green, half black
half loose, half bagged
half you, half me
in the pot
steeping
Chinese stainless steel
utilitarian restaurant quality
qualifies my response
to the lesions and the legions.
An army of North Vietnamese soldiers
lives on handfuls of white rice
not so fragrant
nutty sweet as your neck
or filling
as sustenance derived from
your black bra’d breasts
poured into my mouth...
green tea and black tea together again?

Summer days of stiff red vinyl Chinese booths,
sly waitress smiles in black and white;
take a worried seat in memory
sipping her slow sliced ginger tea.
Try writing with tendinitis
declares December’s cold damp demeanor,
I’m inside her before the end
of the second stanza
ghosting about two nights before New Year’s Eve
following the reserve up the
familiar/unfamiliar path...

"somewhere i have never traveled
somewhere i have traveled...
your eyes have their silence"

Cummings would write
But not me.
Nor will I

"set the shores a little wider"

as Miller would say
in my flesh parched pages;
I will simply expire
like a hundred times before
in your Kali-like-cunt in my mind.
Ferlinghetti was my first love’s favorite
urban windowpoet,
didn’t we drink the City Lights
or something darker, more sinister
than your black hair/sweater/pants
sitting smoking in my window...still
the way you left
brought the old trolley down to the
turnaround.

Share your flesh
is what you wanted
like a metaphor
embraced by two writers
for different stories,

"gladly, beyond any experience,"

Cummings wrote.
Now I see her
now I don’t care if he’s dripping
out of you like hot wax
as long as I am
the poet’s there to collect
everything
in the world enters
and leaves you

I waited to see if you would stay
leave his book for mine
always waiting
and staying
after the fire has gone out
in the stolen Chinese restaurant tea pot,
half green, half black
half loose, half bagged,
amazing how fresh the taste
when two are divided by three
and we were both afraid
of how I needed your infidelity
as much as you
maybe more.

Pour the strongest, darkest cup...
Imagine my goatee’s
the only pubic hair pressed upon
your silky bare pussy
So you left your daddy
got back at him for deserting you
All even now
starting a new novel
balanced as the green and black can be
in the phantom cup I swallow.