tea – minutes of my heart

pleas to sustain and spare the pain

we’re bared to you for your gain

no cloak no quilt

only a mother’s guilt,

watching the glee with which

my green roots and shoots

trembled under your creaky boots;

grumbling old men with jittery teeth

that clatter and grind over beetle leaves

and worms in gums that chatter together

leaving big stains and a cancerous pane

of crimson and brown and blood and hound.

grumbling old men that don’t hesitate

to strike check mate-

and bring my fate,

axes and picks and saws- a dozen

only to kill all millions heathens.

grumbling old men that use the knife

to kill all of their wives

it’s similar to that don’t you see?

I served them too with brilliant tea.

so life is cut and life is eased

life is cut and life is eased

for deserted plains that resemble grey

desperation and dismay

-Tanmay

Everyday we drink tea, resting the tea cups on round jute coasters on a large brown wood coffee table with an even larger brown tinted glass surface.

The tint makes the newspapers below look 30 years old- as if they were fished out from our storage room, but of course they bear today’s day and date- neat and crisp.

The rusk often drips into the tea as we stare into our respective screens on quiet mornings of days’ that we know entail toil. The unuttered desperation for rest adds to the silence, broken periodically by the stunted cries of stunted sparrows. The sparrrows are smaller than they used to be 20 years ago. Their plumage pathetic now, dirt-like instead of the browns that we have preserved in our eyes.

A three-some of green parrots show up at the window near the dining table, overlooking the cemetery. Always in threes, and always silent for the fear of attracting a predator who’d claw them down.

Only once have I sighted a large hawk in our skies, gawking over the cemetery as if it was its land. How would I explain to it that that land is disputed property…

-Tanmay

Tag: tea

red on green

brown