ManicDDaily

Ode to Morning

You promise less and less–
oh, there’s tea.
You still pull that
out from under your half-closed lids
like some energizing
brown rabbit=though now, my own eyes are so damned dry
by the time you wake me, and the whole thing so
old hat, that I leave cups
barely drunk–the leaf muck cold,
as the bag half-sunken, half-afloat, peers up
like a desolate manatee, blinding,
in a circular swamp.

Not like the way tea used to be,
I think curmudgeonly–ly,

which takes me to that first apartment,
its grey moldings trowel-molded by so many layers of paint
that even a Bic gouging at the jambs
(in boredom or plain old pique)
wouldn’t get down
to the wood–
the rooms about ten feet
wide, could fit
a bed. I’d sit in one at the top of Mott
looking over
Houston (I’m talking NYC),
drinking three cups at a shot, hot
and metallically sweet, my pink packets
of Sweet and Low on the ever-ready–
sweet and high–
not on anything, truly, but the sixth floor
of that crumbling walk-up,
and the way your light
was magnified by all the warps—you know, those windows

whose glass proves it’s a liquid, the kind that make the whole world
seem secretly fluid, no matter that it’s hard and shiny
as the hood of a yellow cab, a sunned fender bending
brake lights, calf-fitted boots or someone else’s
cash,
the sky sky-blue, best days, from upmost arc
to the pitch of those water towers, soot-black
as a witch’s roofed hat–oh, what
enchantment!

Habituated to the saccharine, I could not even taste
the fakeness of its sweet, just ripped and poured,
sipped and poured, one cup after
another, as if tea
were a talisman and talismen could be ingested
for timed-release–

I like to think that if I knew then
what I know now
I’d have done something
differently, but all I can come up with
is that I would have drunk
at least one
more cup.

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Here’s a poem of sorts written for my prompt on With Real Toads, to write about something promising or relating to a promise.  Process notes!  Re pic–I tend to get English tea bags that don’t have strings!  That is supposed to be one of them above.  And I don’t have coasters–so I use an old program (that I never quite get with) to protect my night table.

Lastly, Houston–the street in New York–is pronounced House-ton, like the Doctor or a residence.
And, since I have your attention, check out my books!  (I’ve not done an actual author page, but that link will lead you to them.) Thanks!